VNNEX 


HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ON  THE 
PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


The  Reality  of  Psychic 
Phenomena 

A  record  of  the  series  of  scientific 
tests  carried  out  by  the  author  in 
1915  and  1916  to  determine  the 
amount,  direction  and  nature  of  the 
force  used  in  levitation,  and  other 
Psychic  Phenomena. 

Liberally  illustrated  with 
diagrams 

$2.00  net 


E.   P.   BUTTON   &  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

FOR  THOSE  INVESTIGATING  THE 

PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM 


BY 


W.  J.  CRAWFORD,  D.Sc. 

LECTURES  IN  MECHANICAL  ENGINEERING,  THE  MUNICIPAL  TECHNICAL 

INSTITUTE,  BELFAST;  LECTURER  IN  MECHANICAL  ENGINEERING, 

QUEEN'S  UNIVERSITY  OF  BELFAST.    AUTHOR  OF 

"THE   REALITY    OF   PSYCHIC 

PHENOMENA,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 
681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


COPTBIOHT,  1918, 

BT  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  In  the  United  States  of  America 


HINTS  AND   OBSERVATIONS   FOR 

THOSE    INVESTIGATING    THE 

PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM 


THE  belief  of  many  thousands  of  persons, 
of  whom  I  am  one,  is  that  man  survives 
death.  When  he  "dies"  it  is  only  his  material 
body  that  dies.  The  essential  part  of  him — the 
spirit — lives  on  and  functions  in  a  new  realm. 
He  does  not  alter  his  human  characteristics  be- 
cause he  passes  through  the  change  of  death, 
but  he  is  human  in  the  new  world  as  he  is  in 
this. 

The  survival  of  man  is  not  scientifically 
proved.  It  cannot  be  demonstrated  with  in- 
strumental accuracy.  It  cannot,  at  present,  be 
shown  to  be  true,  as  a  theorem,  say  in  mechan- 
ics, can  be  verified  in  a  laboratory.  Until  the 
day  comes  when  instrumental  communication 
with  the  next  state  is  an  accomplished  fact,  it  is 

i 


2          HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

improbable  that  there  will  be  anything  like  gen- 
eral acceptance  of  the  reality  of  survival.  At 
present  it  is  a  matter  of  individual  judgment 
and  of  experience.  The  time  is  coming,  I  think, 
when  even  communication  of  this  kind  will  come 
about  as  a  result  of  the  research  which  will  un- 
doubtedly be  applied  to  the  whole  subject  gener- 
ally in  the  years  immediately  ahead  of  us,  but 
that  time  is  not  yet.  So  it  is  at  present  impos- 
sible to  demonstrate  the  other  world's  reality 
to  everybody.  Each  must  find  matter  for  his 
own  conviction.  Each  must  experiment  for 
himself  and  come  to  his  own  conclusions.  And 
such  investigation  is  not  easy.  Reliable  medi- 
ums are  scarce ;  the  phenomena  even  when  gen- 
uine are  subtle  and  mostly  outside  the  scheme 
of  things  as  -we  know  them  in  this  world ;  there 
are  fraud  and  humbug  around;  there  are  the 
questions  of  the  subconscious  mind  and  various 
strata  of  consciousness,  secondary  and  tertiary 
personality,  unconscious  action  of  the  medium, 
telepathy,  and  so  on.  So  on  the  whole  it 
is  only  to  the  relatively  few  that  the  know- 
ledge and  conviction  can  come  that  survival  is 
a  fact.  People  generally  are  afraid  that  what 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM      3 

may  look  like  a  demonstration  of  survival  is  not 
really  so,  but  is  a  false  deduction  from  imma- 
ture or  unknown  data.  Euclidian  proof,  to 
state  it  plainly,  is  impossible  for  the  majority 
of  people  at  the  present  time.  But,  neverthe- 
less, many  people  whose  minds  are  not  blocked 
by  prejudice  and  not  obsessed  by  the  idea  that 
the  avenues  of  sense  are  the  only  avenues  of 
knowledge,  many  obtain  very  strong  evidence 
of  the  reality  of  the  next  state  if  they  will  but 
take  the  trouble  to  look  for  it.  Not  proof,  mind 
you,  in  the  sense  that  the  scientist  understands 
proof,  but  yet  a  very  strong  probability  which 
may  amount  to  personal  conviction.  There  is 
as  yet  no  telephone  by  means  of  which  we  can 
ring  up  our  friend  who  has  gone  before;  we 
have  to  communicate  with  him  in  roundabout 
and  devious  ways,  ways  which  are  sometimes 
troublesome  and  annoying  when  we  take  a 
shortsighted  view  of  things,  but  which  are  very 
wonderful  when  we  take  the  larger  view. 

For  me  the  reality  of  the  next  state  admits 
of  no  doubt.  I  am  as  sure  that  it  exists  as  I  am 
that  I  am  writing  these  words  at  this  moment. 
My  personal  conviction  is  the  result  of  a  great 


4          HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

amount  of  experimental  and  other  investiga- 
tion into  the  phenomena  of  mediumship,  the  na- 
ture of  some  of  which  the  reader  may  under- 
stand from  a  perusal  of  my  work  ' '  The  Reality 
of  Psychic  Phenomena. ' '  When  I  set  out  on  the 
investigation  I  daresay  I  was  as  skeptical  as 
anybody  of  the  actuality  of  these  things;  but 
years  of  experimental  study  have  entirely  al- 
tered my  convictions.  I  am,  as  I  say,  perfectly 
certain  that  all  humanity,  of  whatever  race  or 
creed,  survives  death  and  passes  at  once  into 
another  state  of  existence  or  plane  of  being. 
This  passing  is  an  automatic  process  and  is 
part  of  the  scheme  of  nature.  The  will,  or  be- 
lief, or  faith  of  man  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

People  who  know  little  of  the  subject  except 
from  hearsay  and  who  are  bewildered  and  preju- 
diced by  the  undoubted  large  amount  of  fraud, 
deceit,  and  want  of  respectability  formerly  con- 
nected with  it,  often  ask  me  if  there  is  really 
anything  in  the  phenomena  of  spiritualism. 
They  want  to  know  if  mal-observation,  hallu- 
cination, conscious  or  unconscious  fraud  on  the 
part  of  the  medium,  or  a  hundred  and  one  other 
things,  cannot  account  for  all  these  strange  hap- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIEITUALISM      5 

penings  without  the  necessity  of  resorting  to  a 
supernormal  origin.  Even  if  the  actual  occur- 
rence of  the  phenomena  be  granted,  are  not  our 
own  personalities  tremendously  complex  and 
fully  capable  of  compassing  what  look  like  mir- 
acles by  means  yet  unknown  or  undiscovered! 
So  why  assume  that  "spirits"  are  the  operat- 
ing agencies  even  if  we  have  to  give  in  to  ex- 
ternal operators  of  some  kind! 

These  are  the  kind  of  questions  my  friends 
ask  me  as  one  having  some  modern  knowledge 
of  the  subject.  But  chiefly  they  wish  to  know 
if  the  phenomena  known  as  spiritualistic  really 
take  place ;  if  they  occur  beyond  all  possibility 
of  dispute ;  if  I  am  absolutely  sure  of  it. 

My  answer  to  them  is  that  certain  types  of 
what  are  known  as  physical  and  mental  phe- 
nomena do  occur.  As  certainly  do  they  occur 
as  that  night  follows  day. 

Whatever  be  the  interpretation,  there  is  now- 
adays no  doubt  of  the  actuality  of  the  phenom- 
ena. Their  occurrence  has  been  established  as 
surely  as  any  type  of  ordinary  physical  phe- 
nomena. I  advise  my  friends  to  pay  no  heed 
whatever  to  the  various  uninformed  articles 


6          HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

that  appear  from  time  to  time  in  the  public 
press  or  to  the  prejudiced  diatribes  of  people 
who  have  never  properly  investigated  for  them- 
selves; for  it  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
facts  about  this  subject  that  people  can  be  found 
willing  and  even  eager  to  pronounce  opinions 
upon  it  who  have  never  sat  in  a  single  seance. 

Before  I  deal  with  the  more  practical  parts 
of  psychic  investigation  the  reader  will  perhaps 
be  interested  briefly  to  learn  some  few  of  the 
things  that  the  entities  who  direct  the  phenom- 
ena (I  often  call  them  "operators'*  in  this 
work)  declare  to  be  true  of  themselves  and  of 
the  world  in  which  they  dwell,  together  with 
some  of  my  observations  upon  their  statements. 
The  reader  is  to  understand  that  I  do  not  press 
my  own  beliefs  upon  him.  I  am  only  telling  him 
a  few  things  that  appear  to  me  likely  to  be  true 
and  which  will  probably  be  placed  definitely 
within  the  region  of  ascertained  fact  before  this 
century  has  run  its  course. 

When  we  take  a  broad  view  of  what  the  op- 
erators say  of  their  world  and  have  regard  to 
the  many  little  incidents  that  occur  at  the  se- 
ances— incidents  which  cannot  be  properly  re- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM      7 

ported  to  outsiders  because  of  their  intimate 
nature  and  their  spasmodic  and  peculiar  type 
— we  see  plainly  that  there  are  two  main  lines 
of  consideration.  Briefly,  it  may  be  stated  that 
the  inhabitants  of  the  other  world  can  report 
to  us  anything  in  the  way  of  their  personal  emo- 
tional states  but  that  they  cannot  tell  us  any- 
thing very  satisfactory  about  the  composition 
of  their  world.  They  can  tell  us  if  they  are 
happy  or  sad,  gay  or  gloomy,  energetic  or  in- 
dolent; they  can  say  if  they  are  pleased  with 
their  surroundings  or  otherwise,  if  they  would 
like  to  return  to  the  earth,  and  so  on,  but  they 
cannot  tell  us  in  a  convincing  way  if  their  world 
contains  what  we  know  here  as  mountains  and 
seas.  Of  course  this  is  a  crude  way  of  put- 
ting it,  but  we  cannot  expect  to  have  exact  lines 
of  demarcation  when  we  are  dealing  with  a 
"subject  such  as  the  present.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  psychic  world — at  least  those  in  direct 
contact  with  us  in  the  seance  room — appear  to 
be  beings  similar  to  ourselves  in  regard  to  all 
essential  qualities.  They  possess  all  the  char- 
acteristics of  human  beings.  They  are  sad,  joy- 
ful, happy,  mirthful,  humorous,  as  the  mood 


8          HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

seizes  them.  In  fact,  if  we  say  they  are  human 
beings  living  in  another  world  and  separated 
from  us  by  a  veil  of  sense,  but  that  they  can 
communicate  their  thoughts  and  feelings  to  us 
through  this  veil,  we  shall  have  an  exact  repre- 
sentation of  what  seem  to  be  the  facts  of  the 
case. 

I  admit  that  it  is  very  difficult  for  the  ordi- 
nary person  to  bring  home  to  his  consciousness 
the  fact  that  these  unseen  beings  can  possibly 
be  like  himself  in  their  make-up.  There  is  an 
ingrained  feeling  in  humanity  that  the  beings 
inhabiting  the  after-death  world  must  be  far 
removed  from  us  in  mental  qualities  and  char- 
acteristics— we  feel  that  they  should  show  a 
great  advance  in  intellectual  equipment  over 
what  they  possessed  here ;  that  they  should  be, 
if  not  quite  angels,  at  any  rate  not  far  removed 
from  them.  Of  course  this  instinctive  feeling 
we  all  possess  is  due  to  the  centuries  of  relig- 
ious instruction  behind  us ;  we  feel  that  the  next 
state  must  of  necessity  be  either  heaven  or  hell. 
Hence  it  is  rather  a  shock  to  us  when  we  find 
the  inhabitants  of  that  other  state  not  to  be 
angels  by  any  manner  of  means,  not  to  exceed 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM      9 

us  appreciably  in  intelligence,  but  to  be,  in  fact, 
only  good-natured  beings  of  much  the  same  ca- 
pacity as  our  familiar  selves.  I  confess  in  my 
own  case  that  I  have  not  yet  quite  got  over  the 
"heaven"  feeling,  so  deep  down  do  age-long 
suggestions  go.  I  cannot  yet  quite  realise  when 
I  talk  to  any  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  other 
world  that  I  am,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  talking 
to  beings  of  nearly  the  same  capacity  as  any 
human  companions.  I  know  that  death  makes 
no  change  in  essentials,  yet  deep-grained  an- 
cestral suggestions  always  cause  in  me  a  sense 
akin  to  wonder  that  it  is  so. 

The  entities  behind  my  experimental  circles 
have  shown  themselves  by  their  acts  to  be  es- 
sentially human  beings;  and  in  this  regpect 
they  conform  to  the  general  rules  all  over  the 
world.  At  all  seances  of  repute,  wherever  and 
whenever  held,  by  whatever  form  of  medium- 
ship  the  communications  are  received,  the  com- 
municating entities  declare  themselves  in  every 
sense  to  be  human  beings.  They  say  they  have 
simply  passed  the  portals  of  death  and  this  is 
practically  the  only  way  they  differ  from  ordi- 
nary humanity  here. 


10        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

The  operators  say  that  their  world  is  a  bright 
and  happy  one,  full  of  vital  energy.  Its  inhab- 
itants are  much  more  "alive"  than  when  they 
lived  on  earth.  This  is  a  point  they  emphasise 
particularly.  They  say  they  have  no  desire 
whatever  to  return  here — they  are  far  better 
off  where  they  are.  The  broad  general  fact 
seems  to  be  that  the  other  state  is  a  more  forci- 
ble or  energetic  one  than  this — energy  seems 
to  be  the  keynote.  Everybody  and  everything 
are  alive  in  a  degree  much  beyond  our  concep- 
tion of  being  alive.  Their  state  of  existence  is 
altogether  fuller,  freer,  and  of  higher  capacity 
than  ours.  Moreover  the  operators  declare 
most  emphatically  that  they  are  very  happy. 
Whenever  asked  the  question  they  try,  by  the 
energetic  way  in  which  they  manifest,  to  illus- 
trate to  us  how  happy  and  content  they  are. 
They  are  very  sure  of  it  and  will  take  no  denial. 

The  operators  declare  that  each  of  them  pos- 
sesses a  body,  and  if  asked  if  it  is  what  we  un- 
derstand by  the  psychic  body,  they  answer  in 
the  affirmative.  They  declare  that  they  are 
present  in  the  seance  room  in  the  psychic  body ; 
that  when  clairvoyants  see  them,  they  see,  in 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     11 

effect,  their  psychic  bodies.  They  say  this  body 
of  theirs  is  not  subject  to  decay  or  disorganisa- 
tion corresponding  to  anything  resembling 
physical  decay  or  disorganisation.  They  em- 
phatically state  that  all  humanity  possesses  two 
bodies,  the  physical  and  the  psychical;  that 
death  really  means  the  complete  and  final  sep- 
aration of  the  two.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  good 
many  clairvoyants  have  declared  that  they  have 
been  able  to  observe — with  the  clairvoyant  eye 
— their  actual  separation  at  the  time  of  death, 
and  the  accounts  are  generally  consistent. 

The  psychic  body  if  it  really  exists,  and  I 
think  it  does,  has  the  following  qualities 
amongst  others : 

(1)  It  is  perfectly  invisible  to  normal  sight, 
though  it  may  occasionally  be  made  visible  to 
clairvoyant  sight. 

None  of  the  entities  in  my  experimental  se- 
ance rooms  has  ever  been  visible  to  me;  but 
various  clairvoyants  have  described  spirit 
forms  as  being  present  and  the  descriptions 
have  been  apparently  confirmed  by  vigorous 
and  happy-sounding  raps. 


12        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

(2)  It  is  quite  impalpable  to  normal  senses 
generally. 

I  have  never  seen,  heard,  felt  or  "sensed" 
the  psychic  body  or  any  entity  in  the  seance 
room. 

(3)  It  is  used  as  part  of  the  mechanism  for 
producing  physical  phenomena. 

I  have  strong  experimental  evidence  that  this 
is  so.  The  operators  say  that  both  the  unfreed 
psychic  body  of  the  medium  and  their  own 
freed  psychic  bodies  are  used  in  conjunction. 

(4)  Physical  matter  presents  no  barrier  to 
its  passage  through  space. 

(5)  It  is  of  such  a  nature  that  when  united 
to  the  physical  body  in  a  living  person  it  is  an 
exact  duplicate  of  the  physical  body.    It  would 
appear  that  each  cell  or  even  atom  of  the  physi- 
cal body  has  somehow  imbedded  in  it,  or  super- 
imposed on  it,  or  connected  with  it,  a  corre- 
sponding element  of  the  psychic  body. 

(6)  Its  composition  is  not  material  in  the 
sense  that  we  know  matter. 

(7)  It  would  seem  to  radiate  all  round  it  an 
aura.    These  are  signs  of  two  distant  auras 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     13 

round  the  body  of  a  man  *  and  it  is  possible 
that  one  is  due  to  the  physical  and  the  other 
to  the  psychical  body. 

(8)  It  would  appear  to  be  the  form  or  mould 
upon  which  the  physical  body  is  organised;  it 
being  therefore  the  permanent  part  of  us  while 
the  physical  is  the  evanescent. 

As  I  have  said  I  have  much  experimental  evi- 
dence which  shows  that  there  is  really  within 
the 'body  of  the  medium  an  interior  something 
upon  which  the  operators  work  when  they  are 
producing  phenomena.  It  is  a  something  which 
while  being  impalpable  so  far  as  our  ordinary 
senses  are  concerned,  is  capable  of  being  pro- 
jected from  her  into  space  and  thereafter  being 
filled  out  with  gross  matter  taken  from  her 
physical  body.  This  filling  out  with  gross  mat- 
ter stiffens  this  invisible,  impalpable,  projected 
something  and  enables  it  to  act  on  inanimate 
objects  in  the  seance  room,  such  as  chairs  and 
tables.  If  it  be  a  portion  of  the  medium's  psy- 
chic body,  as  the  operators  say  it  is,  then  the 
psychic  body  cannot  be  rigid  as  regards  form, 
but  must  be  more  or  less  plastic ;  so  that  a  por- 

*  See  "The  Human  Atmosphere,"  by  Dr.  Kilner. 


14        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

tion  of  it  can  be  elongated  and  projected  to  defi- 
nite points  in  space.  We  have  to  remember 
that  we  can  conceive  an  etheric  duplicate  of  the 
physical  body.  We  know  relatively  very  little 
about  the  ether,  which  may,  for  all  we  can  tell, 
be  a  complex  substance.  The  only  thing  that 
seems  certain  about  it  is  that  it  is  something 
which  passes  beyond  the  bounds  of  matter. 
Possibly  matter  is  differentiated  ether.  There 
are  possibly  many  differentiated  forms  of  ether 
besides  that  one  which  we  know  as  matter. 
There  may  indeed,  for  ought  we  know,  be  a 
whole  world  of  substance  and  even  life  within 
the  folds  of  the  ether.  Nowadays  we  have 
reached  down  to  the  electron  and  there  find  ap- 
parently the  beginning  of  matter.  It  does  not 
necessarily  follow  that  we  have  found  the  be- 
ginning of  all  things. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  evidence  that  the 
psychic  body  does  really  exist  and  this  evidence 
is  fairly  exact  and  is  quite  voluminous.  The 
most  satisfactory  part  of  it  is  that  dealing  with 
the  projection  of  the  double,  as  the  psychic 
body  has  been  termed,  from  living  persons. 
Many  records  are  extant  which  show  that  while 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    15 

the  physical  body  of  a  person  was  sleeping,  or 
in  trance,  or  sometimes  even  awake,  his  psychic 
body  was  seen  a  considerable  distance  away. 
The  matter  is  under  investigation  at  present, 
but  taking  the  evidence  in  a  general  way  it 
seems  to  my  mind  that  we  do  really  possess 
something  of  the  nature  of  a  body — a  body  not 
made  of  matter  in  the  ordinary  sense — which, 
during  life  here,  is  firmly  attached  to  or  forms 
an  integral  part  of  the  physical  body  and  which 
is  probably  the  vitalising  agent  of  that  body.  If 
this  psychic  body  is  partly  withdrawn  from  the 
physical  or  from  any  portion  of  it,  then  the 
latter  is  left  in  a  lifeless  insensitive  condition. 
I  have  shown  elsewhere  that  the  medium  at  one 
of  my  experimental  circles  nowadays  experi- 
ences practically  no  physical  inconvenience  even 
when  forces  approximating  half  a  hundred- 
weight have  their  focus  upon  her  body.  She 
seems  indifferent  to  such  forces.  How  is  this? 
A  valued  scientific  correspondent  has  suggested 
that  the  condition  of  apparent  anaesthesia  is 
due  to  the  psychic  body  of  the  medium  being 
exteriorised  during  the  occurrence  of  phenom- 
ena ;  that  is  to  say,  all  her  psychic  body  except 


16        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

the  part  relating  to  the  head  is  separated  from 
her  physical  body  and  is  exteriorised,  or  moved 
outwards  in  space.  My  correspondent  thinks 
that  the  brain  and  head  are  not  affected  because 
the  medium  is  quite  conscious  during  the  se- 
ance. Her  psychic  and  physical  bodies  being 
separated,  the  vitalising  agent  is  not  closely  in 
contact  with  the  physical  and  hence  she  is  in  a 
condition  of  partial  anaesthesia.  My  friend 
has  possibly  hit  upon  a  portion  of  the  truth. 

The  operators  say  that  our  entry  into  their 
world  at  death  seems  excessively  wonderful  to 
us,  but  yet  that  there  is  a  degree  of  familiarity 
about  it  which  keeps  us  from  becoming  bewil- 
dered. In  other  words  we  are  under  the  action 
of  the  law  of  continuity,  which  enables  us  to 
maintain  balance  on  arrival  within  our  novel 
surroundings.  Nevertheless  I  have  reason  to 
believe  that  most  of  us  will  be  rather  aston- 
ished, and  I  believe,  delighted.  Those  who  have 
been  suffering  from  bodily  illness  will  find  that 
instantaneously  they  have  become  rejuvenated. 
I  have  been  told  that  the  sense  of  bodily  com- 
fort, as  it  were,  which  comes  to  a  man  on  his 
entry  into  the  other  life,  especially  if  previous 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     17 

to  death  he  has  suffered  from  a  long,  lingering 
illness,  is  delightful. 

The  operators  emphatically  declare  that  the 
fact  of  death  does  not  in  the  least  degree  alter  a 
man's  character.  He  is  exactly  the  same  five 
minutes  after  the  passing  as  five  minutes  be- 
fore it.  So  that  the  next  state  of  existence  con- 
tains all  kinds  and  conditions  of  humanity,  just 
as  the  earth  does.  They  say  that  malevolence, 
envy,  hate  and  all  the  lower  attributes  inherent 
in  earth  humanity  exist  also  in  their  world. 
There  are  not  the  two  classes  only — good  and 
bad — as  theology  would  have  us  believe.  They 
say  that  the  good  bears  a  higher  ratio  to  the  bad 
than  is  the  case  here ;  so  that  we  have  an  ad- 
vance, if  it  is  only  a  small  one,  so  far  as  moral 
qualities  are  concerned. 

The  operators  say  that  their  psychic  bodies 
are  incapable  of  being  ill  or  feeling  pain,  but — 
and  it  is  an  important  but — they  emphatically 
declare  that  mental  pain  can  be  felt  and  endured 
in  their  world.  In  other  words  they  have  no 
physical  ailments,  but  remorse,  anxiety,  and 
mental  distress  of  various  kinds  still  find  a 
place  with  them.  The  other  state  of  existence 


18        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

would  appear  to  be  no  heaven  and  no  hell,  and 
the  sooner  this  is  recognised  the  better.  Judg- 
ing by  what  the  operators  tell  us,  it  is  a  world 
just  a  little  higher  than  our  own  as  regards 
the  moral  status  of  its  inhabitants. 

According  to  the  operators  the  people  on 
their  side  are  somewhat  curious  about  psychic 
phenomena.  I  have  often  asked  them  if  there 
were  many  looking  on  at  our  seances.  When- 
ever asked  the  question  they  would  begin  rap- 
ping and  keep  on  rapping  until  we  were  tired 
of  hearing  them.  They  wished  to  indicate  by 
this  that  there  were  great  crowds  of  spirit  peo- 
ple looking  on.  They  told  me  this  was  the  case 
at  all  our  seances.  They  gave  me  the  impres- 
sion that  the  seance  room  and  the  sitters  were 
surrounded  by  a  huge  invisible  audience  ar- 
ranged in  an  orderly  and  disciplinary  manner, 
perhaps  tier  upon  tier  as  in  a  lecture  theatre. 
The  seance  to  many  of  them  would  appear  to 
be  as  novel  as  it  is  to  us.  Moreover,  it  prob- 
ably gives  them  the  opportunity  of  looking 
again  for  a  short  time  upon  the  affairs  of  earth. 
In  all  probability  such  watchers  are  able  to  see 
the  sitters  forming  the  circle.  A  tunnel  has 


PHENOMENA  OF  'SPIRITUALISM     19 

been  temporarily  driven  between  the  two  stages 
of  existence — stages  normally  isolated — with 
the  consequence  that  crowds  of  those  on  the 
other  side  seize  the  opportunity  and  look 
through  on  the  world  they  have  left  behind. 

I  have  asked  the  operators  why  they  con- 
tinue to  demonstrate  at  seances  month  after 
month,  year  after  year;  does  it  not  get  tiring 
to  them?  Would  they  not  be  better  employed 
doing  something  else  I  Their  answer  to  this  is 
that  the  mere  fact  of  being  engaged  in  produc- 
ing the  phenomena  and  thus  doing  useful  work 
helps  them  in  their  own  development.  For  this 
and  for  other  reasons  I  have  rather  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  one  of  the  central  ideas  under- 
lying the  activities  of  the  next  state  is  that  of 
service. 

The  operators  say  that  there  are  different 
spheres  within  their  world.  They  say  that  they 
themselves  belong  to  different  spheres,  some  of 
them  being  in  the  second,  some  in  the  third  and 
some  in  the  fourth.  One  evening,  when  we  had 
a  well-known  trance  medium  with  us,  an  entity 
purported  to  control  who  said  he  was  from  the 
seventh  sphere.  He  said  he  was  the  spirit  di- 


20        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

rector-in-chief  of  the  circle  and  gave  a  few 
homely  words  of  advice  and  encouragement  to 
the  medium  and  sitters.  As  to  what  these 
spheres  may  be  I  can  say  very  little.  Perhaps 
different  spirit  localities,  perhaps  different 
states  of  mentality  or  consciousness,  perhaps 
something  quite  otherwise.  However,  the  op- 
erators will  have  it  that  these  spheres  exist. 

The  entities  communicating  say,  as  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned,  that  life  is  very  full,  vigorous 
and  keen  in  their  world.  They  say  that  there 
is  occupation  for  everybody  and  amusement  for 
everybody.  They  declare  that  many  phases 
of  activity  in  our  world  have  counterparts  in 
theirs;  and  that  in  addition  they  have  occupa- 
tions to  which  there  are  no  counterparts  on 
earth.  It  appears  that  no  one  need  be  idle,  but 
that  all  can  readily  find  congenial  duties.  Most 
duties  here  are  uncongenial  so  that  if  the  en- 
tities tell  the  truth,  the  next  state  is  in  this 
respect  in  advance  of  ours.  Music  and  the  arts 
also  seem  to  have  higher  expression  there  than 
here. 

I  have  been  told  at  direct  voice  seances  that 
the  next  stage  of  existence  possesses  what  are 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    21 

called  "dark"  spheres — places  or  states  which, 
according  to  the  entities,  are  most  unpleasant 
and  in  all  respects  undesirable.  The  entities 
say  there  is  no  orthodox  hell,  but  that  the  dark 
spheres  are  nevertheless  places  of  retribution 
whence  egress  can  only  be  attained  by  laborious 
and  painstaking  effort.  Possibly  it  is  only  the 
worst  of  humanity  who  pass  into  these  dark 
spheres  at  physical  death.  Most  of  us,  who  are 
ordinary  folk,  and  neither  demons  nor  angels, 
will  find  ourselves  well  enough  satisfied  with 
the  change.  But  the  point  I  wish  to  emphasise 
is  that  the  entities  say  that  in  their  state  of  ex- 
istence there  are  in  reality  "dark"  places — 
places  which  should  be  avoided  at  all  cost,  the 
way  to  avoid  them,  so  we  are  told,  being  to  live 
a  normal  life  while  on  earth. 

Although  the  other  state  of  existence  seems 
to  be  inhabited,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  by  hu- 
man beings  who  have  passed  from  this  earth 
by  the  process  of  death  and  who  are  very  simi- 
lar to  ourselves  as  regards  their  states  of  con- 
sciousness and  general  characteristics,  we  find 
that  we  can  form  very  little  conception  as  to 
the  physical  appearance — if  I  may  so  term  it — 


22        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

of  that  next  world.  Is  it  a  real  tangible  world 
containing  things,  for  instance,  that  correspond 
to  our  mountains,  lakes  and  seas!  Is  there 
anything  in  that  world  outside  the  personalities 
or  states  of  consciousness  of  the  beings  inhab- 
iting it?  Is  there  anything  corresponding  to 
matter,  as  we  know  it  here  ?  In  a  word,  is  it  a 
solid,  real  world  such  as  we  are  used  to  here, 
or  is  it  some  kind  of  phantasmagoria  without 
reality  or  substantiality  as  a  basis  f 

I  may  say  at  once  that  the  operators  at  the 
Belfast  circle  are  unable  to  explain — even  by 
analogy — the  appearance  of  their  world.  And 
I  think  this  state  of  affairs  holds  generally  at 
all  reputable  circles.  Not  that  the  entities  in- 
habiting it  exist  within  the  unsubstantial  fabric 
of  a  vision,  as  it  were,  but  simply  that  they 
are  unable  to  explain  to  us  in  terms  we  can 
understand. 

There  is  some  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
psychic  realm  may  include  a  dimension  more 
than  ours,  i.  e.,  it  may  be  in  four  dimensions, 
length,  breadth,  thickness  and  a  something  else 
which  we  may  call  X.  If  this  is  so  we  need 
not  be  surprised  that  its  inhabitants  can  tell  us 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     23 

practically  nothing  of  it.  "We  ourselves  could 
give  no  information  to  beings  living  in  a  two- 
dimensional  world  which  would  be  understand- 
able by  them.  I  once  interrogated  the  opera- 
tors at  the  Belfast  circle  on  this  matter.  The 
following  is  the  conversation,  answers  being 
obtained  by  raps : — 

Q.  Do  you  know  what  a  state  of  three  di- 
mensions is? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  "We  live  in  this  world  in  a  state  of  three 
dimensions,  length,  breadth  and  thickness.  You 
understand  what  I  mean? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Now,  is  the  world  in  which  you  live  one 
of  four  dimensions? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Is  it  one  of  three  dimensions? 

A.  No. 

Q.  It  is  one  of  three  or  of  four  dimensions? 

A.  No. 

They  seemed  pretty  positive  about  it  and  as 
far  as  I  could  gather  appeared  to  know  what 
I  meant.  I  went  on  with  my  questioning,  but 
beyond  the  assertions  stated  above,  they  did  not 


24        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

seem  able  to  explain.  The  impression  I  gath- 
ered was  that  they  exist  in  a  state  which  is  not 
dimensional  in  the  sense  that  ours  is  dimen- 
sional ;  it  cannot  be  described  as  what  we  mean 
by  (possessing  four  dimensions,  nor  yet  what 
we  mean  by  possessing  three.  Indeed,  when 
by  a  further  series  of  questions  I  proceeded  to 
try  to  get  at  what  it  really  was,  I  came  to  the 
conclusion  they  were  unable  to  tell  me  or  to 
offer  any  analogy  which  might  be  helpful.  So 
I  went  on  to  speak  of  other  things,  thinking 
that  by  such  roundabout  means  I  might  manage 
to  obtain  a  glimpse  at  what  was  meant. 

Q.  In  the  world  in  which  you  exist  are  there 
mountains  and  lakes  and  rivers? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  You  remember  what  the  mountains  and 
lakes  and  rivers  of  this  earth  are  like? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Are  yours  as  real  to  you  as  ours  to  us  ? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  On  this  earth  a  mountain  appears  much 
the  same  to  everybody.  Is  that  the  case  in 
your  world? 

A.  No. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    25 

Q.  It  appears  different  according  to  who 
views  itt 

A.  Yes. 

Such  replies  as  these  indicate,  if  we  are  to 
believe  the  operators  (and  in  regard  to  experi- 
mental work  which  I  could  verify  I  ha^e  always 
found  them  truthful)  that  there  is  something 
radically  strange  about  the  world  in  which  they 
exist,  something  that  they  cannot  explain,  some- 
thing that  is  no  doubt  simple-  and  easy  enough 
to  them,  but  which  they  are  quite  unable  to  con- 
vey to  us  in  terms  we  can  follow. 

This  inability  of  the  operators  to  explain  the 
composition  of  their  world  holds  also  with  re- 
gard to  the  explanation  of  phenomena  they 
themselves  produce.  As  a  general  thing  it  may 
be  stated  that  they  cannot  explain  the  inward- 
ness— if  I  may  so  express  it — of  their  phenome- 
nal effects.  They  can  tell  us  whereabouts  on  a 
material  body  they  apply  mechanical  pressure, 
what  leg  of  the  table  they  grip,  and  so  on,  but 
they  cannot  inform  us  what  kind  of  energy  it 
is  they  use  to  obtain  their  results.  This  may 
be  illustrated  by  a  conversation  I  had  with  them 
on  the  matter.  I  had  been  discussing  the  levi- 


26        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

tation  of  a  table  with  them.  Now,  I  have  little 
doubt  that  at  the  commencement  of  the  phe- 
nomenon of  levitation,  a  loose  fibrous  or  thread- 
like structure  is  projected  from  the  medium  and 
attached  to  the  under  surface  of  the  table,  and 
that  psychic  force  is  then  gradually  exerted 
along  this  structure,  making  it  sufficiently  rigid 
to  raise  the  table.  Experimental  observation 
shows  me  these  things  (the  reader  will  find 
the  matter  fairly  fully  discussed  in  my  book, 
"The  Reality  of  Psychic  Phenomena'*.)  Now, 
it  had  occurred  to  me  that  the  thread-like  struc- 
ture really  consists  of  a  cable  of  thin  tubes  and 
that  something  is  pushed  into  the  tubes  in  the 
form  of  a  fluid. 

Here  is  the  conversation: — 

Q.  Let  us  consider  the  phenomenon  of  levita- 
tion.  Do  you  first  of  all  eject  a  thread-like 
loose  structure  from  the  medium's  body  to  the 
under  surface  of  the  table  and  attach  the  end 
of  it  to  the  under  surface? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Do  you  then  exert  a  force  along  the  loose 
structure  which  stiffens  it  and  enables  it  to  levi- 
tate the  table  ? 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    27 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Do  you  apply  this  force  gradually? 

A.  Yes. 

(These  three  answers  agree  with  what  I 
found  from  experiment.) 

Q.  Now  I  want  to  consider  the  thread-like 
structure  along  which  you  exert  the  psychic 
force.  Is  each  of  these  threads  in  reality  a 
tube? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Each  is  hollow  inside? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  You  know  what  is  meant  by  a  tube? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Do  you  stiffen  the  tubes  by  filling  them 
with  something? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  With  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  You  know  what  I  mean  by  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Is  it  not  a  fluid  like  water  you  inject  into 
the  tubes? 

A.  No. 


28        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

Q.  Is  it  not  a  liquid? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Is  it  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Is  the  gas  one  like  the  air  we  have  here? 

A.  No. 

Q.  You  know  what  a  gas  of  the  earth  is  like? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Is  the  gas  you  inject  into  the  tubes  like 
Oxygen,  Nitrogen,  Hydrogen,  or  any  of  the 
others  we  have  here? 

A.  No. 

Q.  But  it  is  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  You  are  quite  sure  it  is  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  But  we  have  no  gas  on  earth  like  it? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Then  this  particular  gas  of  which  you 
speak  does  not  belong  to  the  earth? 

A.  No. 

Q.  It  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  spirit  world? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  But  you  would  call  it  a  gas? 

A.  Yes. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    29 

Q.  This  gas  is  supplied  to  you  for  the  pur- 
pose of  producing  the  phenomena? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Does  the  material  of  which  the  tubes  are 
formed  belong  to  the  spirit  world  like  the  gas  I 

A.  No. 

Q.  The  material  for  the  tubes  belongs  to  the 
matter  of  our  earth? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Is  it  matter  taken  from  the  body  of  the 
medium? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  So  that  a  tube  consists  of  two  kinds  of 
matter,  matter  from  the  earth  and  matter  from 
the  spirit  world? 

A.  Yes. 

I  went  over  the  conversation  again,  putting 
the  questions  in  different  form,  but  the  opera- 
tors stuck  to  their  tale.  In  brief  it  is  that  the 
structure  which  levitates  the  table,  which  moves 
the  table  about  the  floor,  which  makes  raps, 
consists  of  a  bundle  of  tubes.  The  tubes  them- 
selves are  manufactured  from  matter  taken 
from  the  body  of  the  medium.  A  gas,  or  some- 
thing which  resembles  a  gas,  and  which  is  not 


30        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

found  on  earth  but  belongs  exclusively  to  the 
psychic  world,  is  injected  into  the  tubes  and 
this  causes  a  pressure  which  makes  the  whole 
bundle  rigid  or  semi-rigid.  My  readers  are  to 
understand  of  course  that  the  explanation  is 
not  mine  and  that  the  rapping  entities  are  re- 
sponsible for  it.  It  need  not  be  taken  seriously, 
for  all  it  shows  is  that  the  operators  seemingly 
cannot  explain  in  plain  terms  the  more  subtle 
phases  in  the  production  of  their  phenomena. 

It  has  been  stated  in  some  places  that  when 
a  man  dies  he  enters  upon  a  period  of  oblivion 
before  waking  up  in  the  next  state;  that  is  to 
say,  there  is  a  break  in  consciousness  lasting 
for  a  longer  or  shorter  period.  Accordingly,  I 
asked  some  questions  of  the  operators.  I  went 
about  the  matter  as  follows: — 

Q.  Will  the  operator  who  has  been  rapping 
answer  me  a  question? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  I  want  you  to  tell  me  for  what  period  of 
time  you  personally  experienced  unconscious- 
ness when  you  died.  Have  you  any  objections 
to  telling  me? 

A.  No. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     31 

Q.  Was  it  for  more  than  three  days? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Less  than  three  days? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Less  than  two  days? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Was  it  for  only  a  few  hours  ? 

A.  No. 

(A  pause  to  consider  what  the  operator  could 
mean.) 

Q.  Were  you  unconscious  at  all? 

A.  (With  joy)  No. 

Q.  You  passed  through  the  change  we  call 
death  without  a  break  in  consciousness  ? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Is  this  general? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Yours  was  a  special  case? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  There  is  usually  a  period  of  unconscious- 
ness? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  From  a  few  hours  to  a  few  days? 

A.  Yes. 

At  direct  voice  seances  I  have  been  informed 


32        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

by  entities  supposedly  speaking  through  the 
trumpet  that  in  some  few  cases  unconscious- 
ness at  death  persists  for  as  long  as  six  months 
of  our  time. 

One's  feelings  on  waking  up  in  the  next  state. 

I  asked  questions  on  this  matter  from  the 
rapping  entity  above  mentioned. 

Q.  Did  you  feel  strange  when  you  realised 
you  had  passed  through  the  change  of  death? 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Did  you  feel  very  strange  and  bewildered1? 

A.  No. 

Q.  Things  were  strange  yet  in  a  kind  of  way 
familiar! 

A.  Yes. 

Q.  Would  it  be  correct  to  say  that  the  degree 
of  strangeness  and  unfamiliarity  is  on  a  par 
with  what  one  of  us  would  experience  on  being 
suddenly  transferred  to,  say,  some  tropical 
country? 

A.  Yes. 

There  may  be  a  line  of  continuity  between 
the  two  worlds — and  there  seems  no  doubt  of  it 
— but  for  all  that  the  two  worlds  themselves  are 


radically  different.  It  is  questionable  if  matter 
— in  the  sense  that  we  understand  matter — ex- 
ists within  the  next  state  at  all ;  even  matter  in 
its  most  refined  form,  such  as  the  electronic.  Far 
more  likely  is  it  that  our  matter  vanishes  there 
altogether,  even  to  our  last  conception  of  it,  and 
the  next  state  is  an  etheric  one,  a  fact  which 
would  not  render  continuity  impossible,  for 
physicists  are  well  acquainted  with  the  interac- 
tion of  ether  on  matter.  It  seems  to  me  that 
our  matter  has  some  kind  of  a  counterpart  or 
mould  within  the  next  state,  very  difficult  to 
explain  in  words.  Perhaps  matter  here  is  the 
projection  of  fourth  dimensional  matter,  which 
would  explain  a  lot  of  anomalies. 

That  there  are  very  real  energies  in  the  next 
state  which  have  some  form  of  correspondence 
to  the  energies  we  have  here,  I  have  no  manner 
of  doubt.  I  have  seen  enough  in  the  seance 
room  to  convince  me  of  this.  To  take  only  one 
example: — In  the  phenomenon  of  levitation  of 
a  table  or  other  article  a  psychic  arm  extrudes 
from  the  medium — I  do  not  mean  an  arm  in  the 
sense  of  the  human  arm,  but  a  projection  of 
some  kind  from  her  body.  Now  this  projection 


34        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

or  extrusion  is  practically  invisible  and  impal- 
pable— it  is  impalpable  except  just  at  its  free 
end,  where  it  grips  or  presses  on  the  body  it  is 
levitating — yet  it  transmits  throughout  its 
length  great  stresses,  as  is  obviously  the  case 
when  it  sustains  at  its  free  end,  as  it  has  done, 
a  body  weighing  between  thirty  and  forty 
pounds.  Again,  this  structure  seems  to  con- 
tain within  it  quite  a  lot  of  matter  temporarily 
borrowed  from  the  body  of  the  medium.  In 
what  state  or  condition  is  this  matter  that  it 
should  be  invisible  and  impalpable  and  yet  be 
capable  of  transmitting  large  stresses'?  Cer- 
tainly in  no  state  which  we  know  here.  A  scien- 
tific friend  has  suggested  that  it  has  temporar- 
ily disappeared  into  a  fourth-dimensional  state, 
which  is  at  any  rate  conceivable.  And  how  can 
matter  be  taken  from  the  medium's  body,  and 
how  can  it  be  returned,  without  injury  to  her? 
These  are  statements  of  fact,  though  they  are 
problems  whose  solutions  are  unobtainable  in 
our  present  state  of  knowledge.  That  such 
things  happen  shows  us,  I  think,  that  the  in- 
habitants of  the  other  world,  or  at  any  rate 
those  of  them  who  are  trained  to  the  work,  are 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     35 

able  to  act  on  living  matter  in  ways  of  which 
we  have  not  the  least  conception.  It  seems  that 
they  can  make  rear  attacks  on  matter,  whereas 
we  have  to  be  content  with  frontal  fighting.  In 
any  case  their  ability  to  act  on  matter  indicates 
that  even  in  their  plane  of  existence  they  are  in 
indirect  contact  with  it.  Possibly  their  rela- 
tion to  matter  is  similar  to  our  relation  to  the 
ether,  that  is  to  say,  there  is  a  reversal  of  stand- 
point. 

From  my  experience  in  the  seance  room  I 
conceive  the  next  state  as  being  a  very  material 
one,  or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say,  a  very  solid 
one  to  the  senses  with  which  we  shall  be 
equipped  when  we  are  its  inhabitants.  I  do 
not  for  a  moment  think  it  is  an  ethereal,  evan- 
escent, quasi-real  world,  having  no  external  so- 
lidity. On  the  contrary,  I  am  satisfied  that  it 
presents  to  those  living  in  it  an  appearance  of 
reality  at  any  rate  as  great  as  this  world  does 
to  us,  and  probably  greater.  It  seems  to  me 
to  be  all  a  matter  of  sense  perception.  We  can 
be  quite  sure  that  the  entities  existing  on  the 
other  side  of  the  veil  do  not  possess  the  mate- 
rial senses  that  we  do.  But  the  peculiar  thing 


36        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

is  that  they  posses  senses  in  a  general  way 
analogous  to  ours.  Probably  even  in  our  state 
of  existence  such  senses  are  latent  within  us 
and  suddenly  spring  into  maturity  just  at  or 
shortly  after  death  of  the  physical  body.  But 
however  it  is,  with  whatever  instruments  of 
perception  the  unseen  entities  are  equipped, 
their  world,  according  to  their  own  accounts  and 
according  to  what  I  can  indirectly  perceive 
through  years  of  experimental  study  in  the  se- 
ance room,  appears  to  them  as  a  solid,  real 
world  possessing  permanent  form.  Incident- 
ally they  say  it  is  a  beautiful  world,  more  beau- 
tiful even  than  ours. 

I  am  satisfied  from  experimental  observation 
that  the  inhabitants  of  the  next  state  have  a  dif- 
ferent conception  of  time  from  ours.  Even  when 
they  approach  our  world  very  closely,  as  they 
do  at  good  seances,  they  seem  to  have  some  dif- 
ficulty in  getting  into  our  way  of  computing 
time,  that  is,  in  thinking  back  to  what  they  knew 
as  time  when  inhabitants  of  the  earth.  As  to 
what  the  difference  is  I  do  not  know.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  both  time  and  space  as  we  know  them 
here  are  only  components  of  something  else, 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     37 

and  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  other  world  see 
the  resultant,  as  it  were. 

A  speaking  entity  at  a  direct  voice  seance 
once  gratuitously  informed  me  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  space.  Without  going  so  far  as 
that  we  are  bound  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
our  views  of  space  are  limited.  Space  is  in- 
finite with  regard  to  our  present  senses.  It 
seems  to  me  like  an  illusion  purposely  pre- 
sented to  us  in  order  to  conform  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  our  earth  existence ;  to  keep  us  chained 
in,  as  it  were. 

The  entities  communicating  say,  as  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned,  that  the  next  state  is  not  a 
homogeneous  whole,  but  that  it  is  built  up  of 
" spheres"  and  "realms,"  and  that  they  them- 
selves do  not  all  belong  to  one  sphere.  Entities 
belonging  to  a  higher  sphere  may  come  down  at 
will  to  a  lower,  but  not  vice  versa.  At  one  of 
our  seances  some  of  the  visitors  asked  the  op- 
erators in  what  spheres  they  (the  visitors) 
would  find  themselves  when  they  left  the  earth, 
and  the  answer  was,  the  third  and  fourth.  The 
first  sphere  would  seem  to  be  the  abode  of  peo- 
ple whose  moral  development  was  somewhat 


38        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

low  when  they  passed  from  things  terrestrial; 
who  need  a  lot  of  cleaning  up  before  they  can 
rise  into  the  second  and  higher  spheres;  in 
other  words,  the  spheres  next  the  earth  are  the 
abode  of  the  riff-raff  of  humanity.  The  entities 
tell  me  that  all  our  experimental  circles  are 
guarded  very  strictly  on  their  side  so  that  no 
undesirables  shall  be  able  to  get  near.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  I  would  not  care  to  be  in  the  Belfast 
seance  room  if  I  had  any  doubt  of  the  benefi- 
cent intentions  of  those  behind  the  scenes. 
With  psychic  forces  up  to  nearly  a  hundred- 
weight being  exerted  one  can  easily  imagine 
what  would  be  likely  to  happen  if  an  evilly-dis- 
posed entity  was  able  to  thrust  his  presence 
and  will  upon  the  regular  operating  entities. 
The  poltergeist  disturbances,  whose  occurrence 
has  so  often  been  reported,  show  that  such  evil- 
ly-disposed entities  actually  exist  and  I  can 
easily  believe  the  operators  when  they  state 
they  have  thoroughly  to  guard  the  seance  cham- 
ber. 

The  operators  state  that  it  is  some  attribute 
of  the  psychic  body  which  automatically  pre- 
vents an  entity  in  one  sphere  from  rising  to  a 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    39 

higher.  What  they  say  leads  to  the  impression 
that  the  psychic  body  of  a  person  in  the  lower 
spheres  (say  the  first  and  second)  has  some  or- 
dinary matter  entangled  with  it,  i.e.,  his  body  is 
not  purely  psychic  or  etheric,  but  is  encrusted, 
if  I  may  use  the  word,  with  particles  of  some 
kind  of  matter.  The  matter  may  be  of  so  fine 
a  nature  that  it  would  not  be  palpable  to  us, 
yet  its  presence  in  the  psychic  realm  is  a  great 
embarrassment  to  the  entity  possessing  it.  If 
we  accept  the  theory  that  while  here  we  possess 
the  psychic  and  physical  bodies  together,  inex- 
tricably commingled,  and  that  the  former  is  the 
organising  structure  of  the  latter,  it  is  not  so 
hard  to  suppose  that  when  the  two  are  sepa- 
rated at  death,  a  thousandth  of  a  gram  or  so 
physical  matter  may  remain  mixed  up  with  the 
psychic  form. 

I  once  tried  to  weigh  the  psychic  body  of  my 
medium.  She  was  seated  on  a  weighing  ma- 
chine and  I  asked  the  operators  to  exteriorise 
her  psychical  body  and  place  it  beyond  the  lim- 
its of  the  weighing  machine.  I  wished  to  see 
if  there  would  be  any  decrease  in  the  weight 
of  the  medium  when  this  was  done,  i.  e.,  if  her 


40        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

psychic  body  was  susceptible  to  the  force  of 
gravity.  On  the  operators  giving  three  little 
raps  on  the  floor  as  a  sign  to  me  that  they  had 
done  what  I  asked,  I  found  that  the  medium's 
weight  had  decreased  by  about  eight  pounds, 
but  that  the  decrease  did  not  remain  constant 
at  eight  pounds,  but  became  less  and  less  until 
there  was  practically  no  diminution  at  all ;  and 
during  the  whole  experiment  the  operators  de- 
clared that  the  medium's  psychic  body  was  ex- 
teriorised and  placed  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
weighing  machine.  I  thought  at  the  time  that 
the  experiment  was  a  failure  and  I  am  not  now 
sure  that  there  is  much  in  it.  It  has,  however, 
occurred  to  me  as  just  possible  that  when  the 
operators  tried  to  remove  the  medium's  psychic 
body  they  were  unable  to  remove  it  per  se,  but 
had  to  take  some  physical  matter  along  with 
it,  i.  e.,  some  gross  matter  was  at  first  adhering 
to  the  psychic  body  and  this  was  gradually  re- 
turned to  the  medium's  physical  body,  as  evi- 
denced by  the  gradual  reduction  of  her  loss  of 
weight,  until  finally  her  psychic  body  became 
more  and  more  nearly  pure. 
I  expect  the  normal  human  being  on  awaken- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    41 

ing  in  the  next  state  will  find  that  there  has 
occurred  an  exaltation  in  his  state  of  conscious- 
ness; that  is  to  say,  that  his  sense  of  his  own 
ego  has  been  enlarged.  There  will  automatic- 
ally come  to  him  a  more  intense  perception  of 
vitality;  he  will  feel  himself  a  more  vibrant  en- 
tity than  he  ever  felt  himself  here.  Here  his 
soul  looks  upon  Creation  out  of  the  five  little 
windows  of  the  senses.  They  are  really  very 
small  windows  and  afford  only  a  very  limited 
view.  Some  of  them  seem  also  purposely  so  de- 
signed that  the  view  they  do  let  through  is  dis- 
coloured and  out  of  focus,  so  that  instead  of  see- 
ing the  Universe  as  it  really  is,  man  beholds 
only  glimpses  of  it.  Nevertheless  it  is  only  a 
matter  of  sense  peception  and  I  therefore  ex- 
pect to  find  that  across  the  barrier  each  of  us 
will  come  into  possession  of  a  set  of  new  senses 
much  more  useful  and  effective  than  those  we 
have  here.  Those  senses  are  probably  latent 
in  us  now.  Some  of  them  may  even  be  slightly 
active  here,  as  is  probable  in  the  case  of  clair- 
voyants. For  the  great  majority  of  mankind, 
however,  they  are  latent  and  of  little  apparent 
use ;  though  this  uselessness  may  be  but  appar- 


42        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ent  as  they  may  be  the  means  of  which  life  is 
possible  here  at  all,  inasmuch  as  they  may  form 
a  link  connecting  us  with  energies  within  the 
etherio  fold.  In  any  case  I  fully  expect  that 
immediately  on  dissolution  man  will  find  him- 
self the  owner  of  senses  exactly  suited  to  the 
conditions  of  his  new  world.  Nature  is  too  or- 
derly and  precise  in  that  part  of  it  which  we 
can  examine  here  for  the  case  to  be  otherwise. 
If  there  is  a  next  world — and  I  for  one  know 
there  is — then  it  follows  we  can  predicate  all 
the  conditions  of  that  world  as  existing  subject 
to  law  and  order.  There  is  certain  to  be  noth- 
ing of  chaos. 

This  world  is  carried  on — I  mean  as  regards 
its  physical  well-being — according  to  very  strict 
law.  The  force  of  gravity,  for  instance,  which 
holds  our  bodies  to  the  surface  of  the  earth 
which  determines  the  path  of  the  earth  round 
the  sun,  and  which,  in  fact,  renders  life  here 
possible  at  all,  is  constant.  It  is  the  same  now 
as  it  will  be  a  thousand  years  hence.  If  it 
varied  in  any  appreciable  degree  there  would  be 
such  an  upheaval  in  the  universe  as  no  human 
brain  could  conceive.  The  laws  regarding  the 


production  of  electricity,  to  cite  another  case,  do 
not  vary.  The  laws  regarding  the  three  states 
of  matter,  solid  liquid,  and  gaseous,  do  not  vary. 
We  go  on  our  way  under  constant  law  and  or- 
der. We  do  not  find  a  whimsical  fickleness 
about  Mother  Nature.  And  so,  reasoning  by 
analogy,  I  expect  to  find  our  next  state  of  exist- 
ence as  regards  its  physical  aspects,  or  what 
correspond  to  physical  aspects,  as  firmly  and 
unchangeably  governed  as  this.  There  will  be 
natural  law  and  order  of  a  well-nigh  perfect 
kind  and  all  the  philosophers  and  occultists  in 
existence  could  not  persuade  me  to  the  contrary. 

Besides  physical  law  this  world  of  ours  is 
also  under  rule  and  order  with  regard  to  the 
government  of  the  people  in  it.  So  also,  I  ex- 
pect, with  the  other  world.  It  is  a  somewhat 
higher  state  than  this  (of  that  there  is  no  doubt) 
and  it  is  certain  to  be  under  organised  govern- 
ment. Natural  law  will  hold  sway  over  it  and 
spirit  law  will  touch  all  its  people. 

If  there  is  one  thing  more  certain  than  an- 
other it  is  that  the  other  world  is  not  at  some 
immense  distance  from  us,  to  be  reached  only 
by  tremendous  effort  and  involving  total  sep- 


44        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

aration  from  the  affairs  of  this  earth.  The 
other  world  is  here.  It  probably  interpene- 
trates the  earth  and  all  things  earthly.  Being 
a  state  of  a  different  order  from  ours,  either 
by  simple  numerical  dimension  or  by  reason  of 
its  involving  the  ether  directly  in  its  composi- 
tion, it  can  exist  along  with  ours.  That  we  are 
not  conscious  of  its  existence  is  no  disproof  of 
this.  We  have  analogies  which  are  helpful.  A 
room,  for  instance,  may  be  simultaneously  full 
of  light  rays,  X-rays,  wireless  telegraphy  rays 
and  so  on ;  they  may  all  exist  together  and  our 
senses  will  tell  us  only  of  the  light  rays.  The 
rest,  without  the  use  of  special  instruments, 
will  be  as  though  they  do  not  exist  for  us.  So 
it  is  perfectly  conceivable  that  the  next  state 
may  exist  in  a  condition  of  extreme  reality  and 
we  be  quite  unconscious  of  its  presence.  Its  in- 
habitants may  be  all  round  us — and  I  believe 
they  are  all  round  us — and  we  may  be  quite  un- 
conscious of  their  nearness.  Indeed,  a  tremen- 
dous range  of  evidence  shows  that  we  are  con- 
tinually surrounded  by  those  who  exist  in  that 
other  world,  i.  e.,  by  those  who  have  passed 
through  the  process  of  death.  Whether  they 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     45 

are  continually  conscious  of  our  proximity  I 
think  is  doubtful.  That  they  are  sometimes 
conscious  of  our  presence  I  am  sure  is  correct. 
Even  many  of  us  here  at  some  time  or  other 
have,  I  think,  sensed  an  invisible  presence  with 
us.  But  generally  speaking  we  on  this  side  are 
blind  and  deaf  to  all  projections  from  the  other 
state. 

That  this  earth  is  of  a  somewhat  lower  order 
with  regard  to  its  mental  characteristics  and 
physical  energies  than  that  next  one  of  which 
I  speak,  is,  I  think,  evident  from  what  occurs 
in  the  seance  room.  All  we  can  do  in  the  seance 
room  is  to  present  to  the  unseen  operators  suit- 
able passive  conditions,  i.  e.,  we  do  nothing  ac- 
tively involving  intelligent  knowledge  and  de- 
sign. All  the  work  is  done  by  the  unseen  entities. 
They  it  is  who  set  in  motion  the  intricate 
processes  which  result  in  phenomena.  We  sit 
still  and  do  nothing.  It  is  not  conceivable  that 
their  world  is  of  a,  lower  order  than  ours  if  this 
is  so.  A  civilised  race  does  not  enter  a  country 
of  savages  and  expect  the  savages  to  be  able  to 
design  bridges  and  lay  down  railway  tracks. 
The  higher  does  not  expect  the  lower  to  do  the 


46        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

brain  work.  It  is  certain  that  all  the  active 
thinking  is  done  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  next 
state  when  they  communicate  with  us  either  by 
way  of  physical  or  mental  phenomena.  So  it 
therefore  appears  that  their  world  is  at  least 
a  step  in  advance  of  ours.  It  is  a  stage  through 
which  we  pass  on  our  unknown  journey.  Its 
inhabitants  are  the  "live"  people  while  we  are 
relatively  sleeping.  As  a  matter  of  fact  many 
entities  call  ours  the  shadow  world  and  theirs 
the  real  one. 

Is  the  investigation  of  spiritualism  a  suitable 
study  for  everybody? 

The  answer  is  in  the  negative.  Persons  of 
hysterical  temperament  should  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  Only  those  with  calm  well-balanced 
minds  should  touch  it.  For  my  own  part  I  can- 
not see  why  the  mere  fact  of  opening  up  a  chan- 
nel of  communication  with  the  next  state  should 
cause  anybody  to  lose  his  ordinary  self  control 
and  make  him  behave  like  a  religious  fanatic. 
Surely  the  idea  of  there  being  a  state  into  which 
all  humanity  gravitates  after  this  one  is  a  com- 
mon-sense, logical  conclusion  from  the  general 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    47 

facts  of  our  present  life.  There  is  nothing  to 
get  excited  about.  None  of  my  friends  gets 
the  least  bit  excited  and  I  have  many  who  are 
interested  in  the  subject.  Nevertheless  I  have 
known  people  who  are  not  fitted  tempera- 
mentally for  psychic  investigation,  and  I  warn 
any  such  to  leave  it  severely  alone.  If  it  can- 
not be  approached  in  a  calm,  reasoning  spirit, 
and  without  undue  absorption,  it  should  be  left 
in  the  hands  of  those  better  fitted  for  the  task. 
One  of  the  matters  least  understood  by  en- 
quirers into  psychic  phenomena  is  the  question 
of  the  effect  of  the  phenomena  on  their  bodily 
health.  Now,  although  we  are  dealing  with  a 
realm  practically  unknown  when  we  deal  with 
psychic  things,  there  are  a  few  common-sense 
rules  which  if  observed,  will  save  us  from  bad 
effects.  Psychic  experience  would  be  dearly 
bought  if  we  could  only  have  it  at  the  expense 
of  nervous  or  mental  breakdown.  Properly  in- 
vestigated there  is  no  risk  of  this.  Improperly 
investigated  there  is  very  serious  risk.  Why 
should  there  be  risk  to  one 's  health  when  one  is 
a  member  of  a  circle  where  physical  phenomena 
are  produced,  say  for  the  sake  of  argument, 


48        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

strong  physical  phenomena  such  as  telekinesis, 
the  trumpet  voice  or  materialisation?  The  rea- 
son is  obvious.  The  levitation  of  tables,  the 
movement  of  furniture,  the  carrying  about  of 
trumpets,  the  voices,  the  materialisation  of 
forms,  all  represent  a  quantity  of  work  per- 
formed on  the  physical  plane — and  work  not 
permitted  in  the  easiest  way  as  we  ourselves 
would  do  it,  but  done  in  a  special  and  ab- 
normal way  by  what  purport  to  be  spirit 
entities.  For  a  given  quantity  of  work 
done,  at  least  an  equal  quantity  of  energy 
must  disappear.  Whence  comes  this  energy? 
There  is  only  too  much  reason  to  suppose 
that  it  comes  from  the  bodies  of  the  medium 
and  sitters.  Do  not  suppose  that  it  all 
comes  from  the  medium.  It  is  not  correct  to 
consider  the  medium  the  only  source  of  energy. 
It  is  more  correct  to  consider  him  the  instru- 
ment whereby  the  energy  of  the  circle  can  be 
utilised  to  produce  phenomena.  So  that  a  sit- 
ter at  a  physical  circle  probably  supplies  from 
his  body — and  from  the  most  vital  part  of  his 
bodily  structure,  his  nervous  system — elements 
which  the  spirit  operators  utilise  to  do  their 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    49 

phenomenal  work.  The  sitter  therefore  loses 
nervous  energy  and  it  is  in  this  respect  that  the 
danger  to  his  health  lies.  In  a  harmonious  fam- 
ily circle  the  loss  of  nervous  energy  is  at  a  min- 
imum consistent  with  the  presentation  of  phe- 
nomena; in  a  promiscuous  circle  hastily  got 
together  it  is  likely  to  be  at  a  maximum.  I  do 
not  think  that  even  at  the  best  the  process  of 
converting  nervous  energy  into  physical  phe- 
nomena is  an  efficient  one.  I  am  rather  inclined 
to  suppose  it  one  of  the  most  inefficient  methods 
of  conversions  of  energy  we  have  in  nature.  If 
this  is  so  it  follows  that  if  we  could  accurately 
compute  the  work  actually  done,  say  at  a  sit- 
ting of  one  and  a  half  hours'  duration  where 
there  was  an  abundance  of  phenomena,  we 
would  find  that  the  energy  taken  from  the  bod- 
ies of  the  sitters  might  be  five  or  more  times 
as  great,  even  in  the  most  harmonious  'circles ; 
whilst  in  inharmonious  sittings  it  might  be  ten 
or  more  times  as  great.  The  figures,  of  course, 
are  only  guess-work  but  they  will  serve  to  show 
what  I  mean.  Hence  the  reader  can  see  that 
quite  a  considerable  amount  of  energy  in  the 
form  of  nervous  elements  must  be  taken  from 


50        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

the  bodies  of  the  sitters.  Energy  may  also  be 
supplied  from  the  psychic  world,  but  we  must 
not  rely  upon  that.  Therefore  the  primary 
rule  for  the  safeguarding  of  one's  health  is  this 
— Do  not  sit  too  often.  At  the  Belfast  circle 
the  young  medium  and  her  family  sat  only  once 
a  week  except  on  special  occasions.  The  con- 
sequence of  this  was  that  her  health  never  in 
the  least  suffered,  nor  the  health  of  any  of  the 
circle.  Phenomena  could  be  relied  on  to  occur 
at  95  per  cent,  of  the  sittings.  Bad  weather, 
good  weather,  nothing  seemed  to  make  any  dif- 
ference. Had  she  been  a  professional  medium 
and  sitting  every  day,  does  anyone  suppose  the 
results  would  have  been  anything  like  so  good 
and  reliable?  So  the  investigator  should  take 
warning  by  practical  experience  and  sit  not 
more  than  once  a  week,  and  not  longer  than  an 
hour  and  a  half  even  then.  It  is  the  safest  way, 
and  it  is  best  to  be  on  the  safe  side  when  deal- 
ing with  a  subject  about  which  so  little  is  known 
with  certainty.  One  is  apt  to  be  a  little  enthu- 
siastic at  the  commencement  of  one's  investi- 
gations and  to  overdo  the  thing.  For  this  is 
one  of  the  subjects  of  which  the  difficulties  and 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    51 

dangers  are  only  apparent  when  one  has  en- 
tered well  into  it. 

Let  there  be  no  mistake  about  it.  To  most 
people  frequent  sittings,  especially  for  physical 
phenomena,  is  injurious.  The  least  damage  is 
done  in  a  harmonious  family  circle  which  meets 
regularly.  Different  people  are  differently  sus- 
ceptible. It  would  appear  that  the  spirit  en- 
tities can  "draw"  more  easily  from  some  peo- 
ple than  from  others.  That  is  to  say,  people 
are  so  constituted  as  regards  their  bodily  func- 
tions that  with  some  the  nervous  elements  nec- 
essary for  phenomena  can  be  abstracted  with 
greater  ease  and  in  larger  quantities  than  with 
others.  Such  people  are  therefore  liable  to  be 
injured  physically  if  they  do  not  use  the  great- 
est discretion.  Just  why  the  vital  nervous  fluid 
can  be  taken  more  easily  from  some  than  from 
others  is  unknown,  but  I  have  no  doubt  of  the 
general  truth  of  the  statement.  I  have  found 
that  among  seven  people  in  the  seance  room, 
the  loss  of  bodily  weight  after  a  good  phenom- 
enal sitting  varied  from  nothing  in  the  case 
of  one  sitter  to  six  ounces  in  the  case  of  an- 
other (see  "The  Reality  of  Psychic  Phenom- 


52 

ena")-  Some  of  this  may  have  been  due  to 
natural  causes,  such  as  respiration  and  so  on, 
but  very  improbably  the  whole  of  it.  And  while 
it  is  true  that  with  some  people  the  nervous  ele- 
ments can  be  abstracted  with  ease,  in  the  case 
of  a  few  people  they  canot  be  abstracted  at  all ; 
and  some  people  are  even  so  constituted  that 
they  absorb  this  kind  of  energy  in  a  seance 
room  instead  of  giving  it  out.  If  you  find  some- 
body who  seems  positively  to  thrive  on  seances, 
be  wary.  That  person  is  almost  certainly — 
perhaps  quite  unconsciously  to  himself — help- 
ing himself  at  the  expense  of  others.  There 
is  more  in  the  vampire  theory  than  most  people 
suppose.  A  seance  chamber  for  physical  phe- 
nomena is  a  kind  of  melting  pot  of  nervous  en- 
ergies. The  vampire  takes  back  an  undue 
share  of  what  is  left  over  when  phenomena  are 
concluded  and  he  may  also  be  drawing  on  his 
own  account  from  his  neighbours  during  the 
whole  time  of  the  sitting.  And  it  is  not  always 
necessary  that  such  a  person  be  in  a  seance 
room  in  order  to  receive  benefit  at  the  expense 
of  his  fellows.  A  hall  full  of  people  or  a 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    53 

crowded  public  conveyance  suffices.  I  also  am 
inclined  to  think,  from  the  circumstantial  tales 
that  have  been  told  me,  that  there  are  means 
of  starting  up  an  actual  flow  of  nervous  ele- 
ments from  one  person  to  another,  the  victim 
at  the  time  being  quite  unconscious  of  the  use 
that  is  being  made  of  him.  For  it  is  a  peculiar- 
ity of  the  loss,  of  energy  of  the  nervous  type — 
the  kind  of  loss  that  occurs  at  seances — that  the 
depletion  is  not  usually  felt  at  the  time  of  its 
occurrence,  but  only  some  hours  afterwards. 
After  an  evening  sitting  for  physical  phenom- 
ena, it  is  often  only  on  the  following  morning 
when  the  ill  effects  are  observed.  So  unequal 
have  I  found  to  be  the  contributions  of  nervous 
energy  from  different  people,  that  when  acting 
as  a  member  of  a  circle  I  now  always,  if  I  can 
manage  it,  ask  all  the  individuals  present  to 
join  hands  for  a  moment  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  sitting — at  the  same  time  asking  the  op- 
erators to  average  up,  as  far  as  they  can,  the 
total  loss  amongst  those  present.  So  in  order 
to  safeguard  your  health  you  should  be  careful 
with  whom  you  are  sitting. 


54        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

The  following  are  some  further  results  of 
weighings  just  before  and  just  after  seances. 

Eesults  for  an  ordinary  seance  where  the  sit- 
ters' hands  were  in  contact  with  the  table 
throughout. 

A  drawing-board  was  placed  upon  the  plat- 
form of  the  weighing  machine  and  a  chair  upon 
the  drawing-board.  The  board  and  chair  to- 
gether weighed  18%  Ibs.  and  this  is  included  in 
the  weights  given  below. 

Weights  just  be-  Weights  just 

fore  seance.  after  seance. 

Stono      Pounds  Stone      Pounds 

Mr.  X.  (medium)  ......     11              9%  11             9% 

Miss  A  ..............       8            13  8            12% 

Mrs.  B  ..............     10              2%  10             2 

Mrs.  C  ..............     11            113^  11            10% 


The  following  are  the  results  for  the  same  sit- 
ters but  for  another  contact  seance. 

Weights  just  be-  Weights  just 

fore  seance.  after  seance. 

Stone      Pounds  Stone    Pounds 

Mr.  X.  (medium)  .....     11            10%  11            10V8 

Miss  A  ..............       9             0  8            13}4 

Mrs.  B  ...............     10             1%  10             1% 

Mrs.  C  ...............     11           10V4  11 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     55 

The  following  are  the  results  for  a  "direct 
voice"  seance.  The  drawing-board  and  chair 
in  this  case  together  weighed  13%  Ibs.,  and  this 
is  included  in  the  weights  given  below. 

Weights  just  be-        Weights  just 


Mrs.  Y.  (medium 
Mrs.  B  

fore  i 
Stone 
019 

seance. 
Pounds 
13% 
13% 
6 
3% 

ey4 

7 
9V2 

after 
Stone 
19 
9 
11 
10 
11 
13 
12 

seance. 
Pounds 
13% 

131/2 

5V4 
3 
4V4 
8% 
9% 

9 

Mrs.  C  

11 

Mrs.  D  

10 

Mr.  X  

11 

Mr.  E  

13 

Mr.  F.  . 

12 

A  very  simple  method  of  communication  be- 
tween this  state  and  the  next  is  by  movements 
of  a  table  when  a  number  of  people  sit  round  it 
and  place  their  hands  on  it.  Its  chief  recom- 
mendation is  that  it  does  not  require  a  very 
powerful  medium.  The  experimenter  will  find 
that  nearly  any  combination  of  half  a  dozen 
persons  can  obtain  movements  of  the  table  in 
this  way.  Unfortunately,  however,  there  are 
several  drawbacks.  For,  generally  speaking, 
communications  thus  obtained  are  not  clear  and 
definite.  We  have,  to  begin  with,  contact  be- 
tween the  hands  of  the  sitters  and  the  table,  so 


56        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

that  the  questions  of  involuntary  muscular 
movement  and  the  influence  of  the  muscles  on 
the  thoughts  of  the  sitters  come  in,  which  are 
very  serious  matters  indeed  when  the  veracity 
or  falseness  of  messages  has  to  be  considered. 
I  have  made  some  experiments  on  movements 
of  the  table  with  contact  and  have  otherwise 
observed  many  cases  of  the  phenomenon  with 
various  mediums.  I  have  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  there  are  three  methods  by  which  the 
table  is  caused  to  move: — 

(1)  All  movements  are  due  to  muscular  force 
employed  by  the  medium.    The  medium  may  be 
quite  unconscious  that  he  is  exerting  muscular 
pressure,  but  the  fact  remains  that  every  mo- 
tion of  the  table  is  due  to  him.     (I  do  not  say 
that  it  is  not  a  genuine  psychic  action,  for  in 
many  cases  I  believe  it  is.)    And  not  only  is  he 
employing  muscular  pressure,  but  he  is  using 
a  force  above  that  which  he  normally  exerts — • 
a  well-known  condition  accompanying  psychic 
action,  which  often  causes  an  enhancement  of 
muscular  tension. 

(2)  All  movements  are  due  to  psychic  action 
— to  psychic  forces  applied  to  the  table  .quite 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    57 

independently  of  the  muscular  system  of  the 
medium. 

(3)  Movements  are  caused  by  a  mixture  of 
(1)  and  (2) ;  i.e.,  there  is  true  psychic  pressure 
combined  with  some  muscular  pressure. 

It  is  only  with  mediums  of  the  type  (2)  one 
can  be  fairly  certain  that  true  psychic  messages 
are  coming  through. 

The  chief  trouble  with  these  contact  move- 
ments is  the  determination  of  the  effect  of  the 
thoughts  of  the  sitters  upon  the  motion,  either 
ordinary  objective  thoughts  or  subconscious 
ones.  How  far  can  we  be  sure  that  the  move- 
ments are  due  to  external  agencies  and  how  far 
to  ourselves  ?  For  my  part  I  do  not  think  that 
any  strict  line  of  demarcation  can  be  drawn.  I 
have  often  found  that  messages  thus  delivered 
are  a  mixture  of  the  real  thing  and  the  false 
and  that  absolute  reliance  cannot  be  placed  upon 
them.  Nearly  everybody  who  has  experi- 
mented is  aware  of  the  sometimes  unsatisfac- 
tory character  of  such  messages.  A  name,  for 
instance,  is  being  laboriously  spelt  out  and  the 
spelling  breaks  down  in  the  middle  so  that  the 
word  cannot  be  completed,  and  if  attempts  are 


58        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

made  to  complete  it,  only  worse  confusion  en- 
sues; some  simple  sentence  becomes  inextric- 
ably mixed  up  with  another ;  two  entities  seem- 
ingly try  to  communicate  at  the  same  time; 
and  so  on.  I  have  known  many  cases  in  which 
the  answers  received  have  been  obviously  due 
to  the  thoughts  of  the  sitters,  either  subliminal 
or  objective,  and  to  nothing  else  whatever.  It 
was  perfectly  apparent  that  no  spirit  entity 
had  anything  to  do  with  them.  On  the  other 
hand  I  know  of  some  cases  where  brief  but 
genuine  messages  have  been  received — proved 
genuine  by  corroborative  phenomena  at  the 
same  or  a  subsequent  seance.  A  favourite  ex- 
planation for  the  confusion  and  uncertainty 
arising  from  these  "contact"  messages  among 
spiritualists  is  that  two  or  more  spirits  in  dif- 
ferent "planes"  are  trying  to  operate  the  table 
at  the  same  time,  existing  on  different  planes 
they  cannot  see  each  other  and  are  otherwise 
totally  unaware  of  each  other 's  presence.  This 
is  a  plausible  enough  explanation  but  is  suspect. 
More  likely  the  cause  lies  in  the  imperfect 
means  of  communication,  the  lack  of  a  strong 
medium,  and  in  the  physical  contact  between 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     59 

hands  of  sitters  (and  hence  their  brains)  and 
the  table.  It  is  my  experience  that  whenever 
opportunities  are  given,  the  inhabitants  of  the 
next  state  endeavour  to  open  up  communication 
with  this ;  so  one  can  be  pretty  sure  that  when 
any  circle  of  earnest  enquirers  sits  round  a 
table  and  gives  as  good  conditions  as  possible, 
everything  will  be  done  that  can  be  done  from 
the  other  side.  There  is  no  need  to  put  down 
any  confused  messages  to  lack  of  will  to  com- 
municate on  the  part  of  our  friends  across  the 
barrier.  Their  world  is  not  a  world  of  chaos 
but  one  of  orderly  and  systematic  endeavour. 
They  do  all  the  real  work  at  seances  and  it  is  to 
be  presumed  they  labour  in  a  consistent  and 
regulated  manner. 

Sometimes,  however,  the  experimenter  will 
find  that  he  is  able  to  obtain  what  look  like 
genuine  messages  by  means  of  a  tilting  table; 
and  he  will  find  that  if  he  is  enthusiastic  and 
tries  to  give  the  best  possible  conditions  which 
experience  shows  him  are  necessary  for  phen- 
omena, that  the  clarity  and  length  of  the  mes- 
sages are  likely  to  improve.  For  it  is  only  by 
persistence  that  anything  worth  having  can  be 


60        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

obtained  in  the  psychic  world.  The  dilettante 
gets  nothing.  Many  people  seem  to  forget  that 
the  entities  operating  from  the  next  state  have 
themselves  to  experiment  with  every  circle 
which  is  formed  before  even  the  slightest  phe- 
nomenon can  be  produced,  and  that  sometimes 
the  sitters  do  not  form  an  ideal  combination 
from  this  point  of  view,  with  the  consequence 
that  their  psychic  emanations  have  to  be  mixed 
and  worked  up  for  quite  a  long  time  before  de- 
cent results  can  ensue.  So  that  it  is  only  to  the 
earnest  enquirer  that  phenomena  come.  In 
my  opinion  the  home  circle  is  the  place  at  which 
one  should  attempt  to  communicate  with  one's 
nearest  and  dearest.  A  good  home  circle  meet- 
ing for  an  hour  or  an  hour  and  a  half  once  a 
week  and  composed  only  of  the  members  of 
one's  own  family  or  of  close  friends,  is  in  the 
end  productive  of  more  satisfactory  personal 
results  than  an  eternal  hunt  after  advanced 
professional  psychics.  Certainly  everyone 
should  take  opportunities  for  witnessing  ad- 
vanced phases  of  phenomena,  but  no  reliance 
should  be  placed  on  such  occasional  exhibitions 
for  anything  in  the  way  of  personal  communion 


PHENOMENA  OP  SPIRITUALISM     61 

with  particular  persons  in  the  Beyond.  Ma- 
terialisation, direct  voice,  etc.,  are  very  useful 
in  bringing  home  to  one's  mind  the  reality  of 
the  next  life,  but  the  harmonious  home  circle 
with  its  table  tilting,  bits  of  clairvoyance,  clair- 
audience,  and  so  on,  and  minus  the  professional 
medium,  is  the  best  means  of  getting  into  touch, 
even  though  it  may  be  only  in  a  fitful  way,  with 
one's  own  relatives. 

Returning  for  a  little  to  movements  of  the 
table  under  contact.  I  remember  it  was 
through  this  simple  means  I  was  led  to  take  an 
interest  in  the  subject  (as  I  daresay  it  is  with 
many  people).  A  number  of  us  had  been  sit- 
ting round  a  small  table  in  the  usual  way  and 
had  obtained  the  usual  tiltings  and  usual  mixed- 
up  messages,  when  suddenly  the  table  twisted 
round  under  our  hands  and  did  not  stop  until 
it  had  turned  through  nearly  a  complete  revo- 
lution. It  did  this  two  or  three  times.  The 
movement,  which  was  so  obviously  not  pro- 
duced by  any  of  us  present  and  which  we  did 
not  expect — this  simple  little  turning  movement 
— caused  the  first  glimmer  of  doubt  in  my  mind 
that  all  the  table  tiltings,  etc.,  were  due  to  sub- 


62        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

conscious  action  of  the  sitters,  as  I  had  strongly 
held  up  to  that  time.  From  that  moment — 
now  years  ago — I  decided  to  investigate  the 
matter  thoroughly.  When  one  looks  back  it 
seems  rather  amusing  to  observe  from  what 
small  things  one's  convictions  spring. 

Now,  while  I  have  been  careful  to  state  that 
in  the  majority  of  cases  of  movement  of  a  table 
under  contact  that  the  results  are  to  a  large 
extent  uncertain,  and  that  great  common-sense 
and  discrimination  should  be  used  by  enquirers, 
yet  it  would  not  be  fair  to  inexperienced  read- 
ers if  I  did  not  say  that  sometimes,  if  one  of 
the  circle  has  medium istic  tendencies  somewhat 
in  excess  of  the  average,  very  good  results  can 
be  obtained.  It  is  found  that  in  many  families 
one  or  more  of  its  members  possesses  some- 
what pronounced  physical  mediumship;  not 
sufficiently  strong  to  bring  about  movements 
without  contact,  but  much  stronger  than  is 
usual  and  such  that  when  he  or  she  places  hands 
on  the  table  along  with  the  hands  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  circle,  very  powerful  and  even  vio- 
lent movements  of  the  table  take  place;  the 
action  in  these  cases  being  often  purely  psychio 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     63 

and  having  practically  nothing  to  do  with  the 
exertion  of  muscular  force.  I  am  personally 
acquainted  with  the  members  of  several  such 
circles.  At  a  seance  with  one  of  these,  all  hands 
being  placed  lightly  on  top  of  the  table,  the 
table,  which  weighed  at  least  twenty  pounds, 
rose  completely  into  the  air — this  being  the 
only  case  of  levitation  with  contact  that  I  have 
witnessed,  although  the  phenomenon  is  said  to 
be  fairly  common.  At  another  of  these  circles 
some  vigorous  entity  seemingly  took  charge 
of  the  table  (he  gave  a  name  and  other  par- 
ticulars) for  with  only  a  few  hands  lightly  rest- 
ing on  its  surface  I  was  unable,  although  I  ex- 
erted all  my  force  standing  directly  over  it,  to 
prevent  it  moving,  twisting  about,  and  dancing 
on  the  floor.  Yet  these  two  friends  of  mine,  to 
whose  mediumship  the  phenomena  were  due, 
were  not  sufficiently  strong,  psychically  speak- 
ing, to  obtain  phenomena  without  contact. 
They  were  contact  mediums  only.  I  rather 
think  that  in  true  psychic  phenomena  with  con- 
tact, i.  e.,  where  the  muscles  of  the  medium  are 
not  used  to  produce  the  table  movements,  the 
spirit  entities  first  of  all  "draw"  from  the  sit- 


64        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ters  a  quantity  of  psychic  fluid  and  probably 
connect  this  to  the  fluid  emanations  of  the  me- 
dium, i.  e.,  attach  it  to  his  aura  so  as  to  strength- 
en it.  They  then  apply  forces  to  different  parts 
of  the  table  as  they  do  in  non-contact  phenom- 
ena by  means  of  rod-like  projections  from  the 
auric  sheath  of  the  medium.  The  reaction  would 
thus  probably  be  found  on  the  medium  as  if  is  in 
the  case  of  non-contact  phenomena.  Any  reader 
of  these  notes  who  has  attended  a  few  circles 
will  be  aware  of  the  cold  breeze  which  is  often 
felt  on  the  hands  for  a  little  time  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  sitting;  and  perhaps,  also, 
of  a  peculiar  kind  of  tingling  of  the  finger  tips 
and  even  of  a  cobwebby  sensation  on  the  face 
and  hands;  also,  sometimes  a  feeling  of  nerv- 
ous irritation  as  though  something  was  being 
drawn  out  of  the  body.  These  things  usually 
happen  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  seance  and 
are  in  abeyance  later  on.  What  they  really 
mean  is  probably  that  the  operators  are  ab- 
stracting from  the  bodies  of  the  sitters  particles 
of  nervous  matter;  are  causing  a  flow,  as  it 
were,  from  their  bodies.  Normally,  I  expect 
that  the  aura,  the  nervous  enswathement  of  the 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     65 

body,  is  in  a  state  of  equilibrium,  but  that  the 
operators  can  act  on  it  and  project  it  to  a  con- 
siderable distance  from  the  body.  When  the 
hands  of  the  sitters  are  in  contact  with  the  wood 
of  the  table,  the  spirit  operators,  acting  as  they 
must  from  within  the  body  outwards,  can  pro- 
ject these  aurio  or  nervous  emanations  into 
space  more  easily  than  if  there  was  an  air  gap 
to  cross,  as  in  non-contact  phenomena.  The  ema- 
nation when  projected,  clings  to  the  wood,  and 
does  not  tend  to  dissipate  itself  in  the  air.  It  can 
therefore  be  more  easily  collected  and  concen- 
trated in  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  the 
table  than  would  be  the  case  if  it  were  thrown 
from  the  body  into  the  air  with  no  conducting 
medium  to  help. 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  about  the  why 
and  wherefore  of  such  phenomena  even  though 
there  is  very  little  to  go  on  in  the  way  of  ex- 
perimental results.  I  have  certainly  received 
messages  via  the  table  stating  that  the  spirit 
entities  mix  the  psychic  or  nervous  emanations 
of  the  sitters  and  that  sometimes  there  is  diffi- 
culty in  getting  these  emanations  to  blend,  this 
especially  being  so  if  the  circle  is  a  promiscu- 


66        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ous  one.  And  my  observations  on  non-contact 
phenomena  lead  me  to  believe  there  is  a  certain 
amount  of  truth  in  the  statement.  For  in- 
stance, in  seance  rooms  where  tables  were 
moved  without  physical  contact,  I  found  that 
after  a  sitting  was  well  started,  I  was  always 
unable  to  charge  an  electroscope,  even  though  I 
tried  to  do  so  in  a  corner  of  the  chamber  far- 
thest from  the  medium.  In  order  to  charge  it 
I  had  to  take  it  outside  the  room.  I  asked  the 
operators  if  there  was  any  "power"  in  the 
seance  room  so  far  away  from  the  medium  and 
they  answered  by  raps  that  there  was.  By 
"power"  I  understood  them  to  mean  particles 
of  matter  taken  from  the  medium.  They  al- 
ways called  everything  of  this  nature  "power." 
I  take  it  that  some  of  the  nervous  particles  from 
medium  and  sitters  were  probably  floating 
about  in  the  air — particles  which  had  got  out  of 
control,  as  it  were.  Indeed,  it  is  not  hard  to 
imagine  this  is  so.  For  occasionally  I  have  felt 
a  peculiar  tension  of  the  nerves  in  the  seance 
room  as  though  external  charged  particles  were 
interacting  with  my  nervous  system.  I  did  not 
feel  this  very  strongly  or  very  often  at  my  Bel- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     67 

fast  experimental  circle,  owing,  presumably  to 
the  nervous  currents  being  so  rigorously  under 
control  there.  But  with  other  mediums  and  cir- 
cles I  have  felt  it  very  violently.  As  a  case  in 
point  I  remember  I  was  once  sitting  beside  a 
friend  at  a  public  meeting,  when  he  suddenly 
commenced  to  shiver  and  give  spasmodic  jerks 
of  the  body  and  limbs,  and  to  present,  in  short, 
all  the  symptoms  of  being  under  strong  "con- 
trol." He  tried  in  vain  to  throw  the  influence 
off  but  did  not  succeed,  and  had  finally  to  leave 
the  room.  As  I  say,  I  was  sitting  beside  him, 
but  I  was  not  in  physical  contact  with  him.  But 
while  the  spasmodic  jerking  was  occurring,  I 
felt  a  most  peculiar  electrical  kind  of  tension 
all  over  my  body ;  not  a  jerky  muscular  feeling, 
but  a  sensation  as  though  my  nervous  system 
was  highly  "charged."  The  feeling  disap- 
peared as  soon  as  my  friend  left  the  hall.  What 
had  been  happening?  Possibly  some  spirit  en- 
tity was  endeavouring  to  take  control  of  him 
(as  a  matter  of  fact  he  said  he  recognised  his 
chief  "guide"),  was  acting  on  my  friend's 
nervous  system,  was  throwing  off  into  space 
surrounding  him  nervous  streams,  or  nervous 


68        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

particles,  or  was  acting  on  or  expanding  Ms 
aura,  with  the  consequence  that  my  own  nerv- 
ous system  or  auric  enswathement  came  into 
the  region  of  disturbance  and  was  thereby  af- 
fected. 

I  remember  that  on  another  occasion  some- 
thing of  a  similar  nature  occurred.  A  young 
lady  was  showing  me  some  of  the  phenomena 
she  could  obtain  with  the  table.  She  was  a 
powerful  "contact"  medium  and  no  sooner  did 
she  place  her  hands  on  the  edge  of  a  heavy  table 
than  it  moved  about  in  an  extraordinarily  vio- 
lent manner.  I  was  standing  near  the  table,  a 
couple  of  feet  away  from  the  medium.  Sud- 
denly I  felt  a  violent  muscular  contraction  in 
the  chest,  and  this  was  succeeded  in  a  few  sec- 
onds by  another.  At  the  same  time  the  whole 
of  the  little  room  seemed  to  be  highly  charged 
with  a  species  of  electrical  tension  which  im- 
pinged upon  and  strongly  affected  the  whole  of 
my  own  nervous  system.  So  violent  were  the 
sensations  that  I  had  in  the  end  to  leave  the 
room.  And  I  experienced  disagreeable  twitch- 
ings  and  a  nervous  exaltation  round  the  surface 
of  the  body  for  more  than  an  hour  afterwards. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     69 

It  seems  likely  that  the  nervous  emanations 
projected  from  the  medium  were  in  this  case 
of  so  violent  a  character  that  they  were  sent 
out  into  space  for  a  considerable  distance  round 
her  and  impinged  upon  and  affected  my  system 
of  nervous  equilibrium.  Psychic  energy  must 
come  from  somewhere  and  there  is  every  reason 
to  suppose,  as  I  have  mentioned,  that  a  lot  of 
it  comes  from  the  bodies  of  the  medium  and  sit- 
ters in  the  room.  The  field  for  research  here  is 
vast,  and  I  for  one,  if  I  can  find  the  time,  in- 
tend to  experiment  in  this  domain. 

Only  persons  who  feel  a  strong  desire  that 
way  should  investigate  spiritualism.  It  is  not 
a  matter  of  an  evening's  fun.  The  subject 
should  only  be  approached  in  a  reverent  and 
enquiring  spirit,  all  levity  of  a  hilarious  kind 
being  strictly  prohibited.  For  it  is  a  sufficiently 
serious  matter  to  meet  together  with  the  ob- 
ject of  opening  up  communication  across  the 
bridge  of  death,  as  many  of  us  believe  is  the 
case.  We  are,  at  the  very  least,  delving  into 
the  unknown,  and  it  behooves  us  to  protect  our- 
selves by  behaving  in  a  serious  and  becoming 
way.  I  know  enough  from  practical  acquaint- 


70        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

ance  with  the  subject  to  say  that  it  is  only  by 
looking  upon  the  matter  in  a  serious  light  that 
any  results  of  value  can  be  obtained.  I  do  not 
mean,  of  course,  that  when  we  assemble  for  a 
seance  we  should  be  pervaded  with  a  gloomy 
and  solemn  spirit.  That  is  quite  unnecessary 
and  deleterious  to  good  phenomena.  But  there 
should  be  no  behaviour  of  a  childish  or  silly 
kind. 

During  sittings  the  mind  should  be  kept  in 
a  state  of  gentle  relaxation — there  should  be 
no  mental  concentration.  Too  much  attention 
should  not  be  paid  to  any  phenomena  occur- 
ring, the  reason  being  that  when  the  brain  is 
in  a  state  of  concentration  experiments  show 
that  operators — those  who  produce  the  phe- 
nomena— have  difficulty  in  establishing  the  es- 
sential flow  of  psychic  energy  from  the  bodies 
of  the  sitters.  Why  this  should  be  so  I  do  not 
pretend  to  know,  but  that  it  is  so  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever.  No  troubles  or  worries  of  any 
kind  should  be  brought  to  the  seance  room.  The 
mind  should  be  in  a  placid  cheerful  state.  The 
better  the  physical  health,  the  more  cheerful 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     71 

and  happy  the  spirit,  the  better  the  phenomena, 
other  things  being  equal. 

No  heavy  meals  should  be  partaken  of  for 
some  hours  before  a  seance.  The  members  con- 
stituting the  circle  should  assemble  half  an 
hour  or  so  before  the  sitting  and  listen  to  a 
little  good  music,  played  perhaps  by  one  of 
them  on  the  piano  or  organ.  This  aids  mental 
harmony  and  gives  the  right  atmosphere  for 
the  seance  to  follow.  It  had  also  another  ob- 
ject in  that — as  I  believe — it  enables  the  spirit 
operators  to  establish  preliminary  contact  with 
the  members  of  the  circle. 

I  am  going  now  to  describe,  in  some  detail, 
the  method  used  in  holding  an  ordinary  "con- 
tact" seance,  i.  e.,  a  seance  in  which  the  mem- 
bers of  the  circle  place  their  hands  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  table.  This,  as  I  have  already  said, 
is  a  very  elementary  method  of  holding  com- 
munication with  unseen  intelligences;  but,  un- 
fortunately, it  is  the  only  one  possible  or  prob- 
able for  the  great  majority  of  investigators. 

Under  good  conditions,  however,  it  is  a  fairly 
satisfactory  method  and  may  possibly  lead  to 
higher  and  more  advanced  phases  of  phenom- 


72        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ena.  In  any  case  the  hints  that  I  am  en- 
abled to  give  are  all  from  practical  experience, 
and  will,  most  of  them,  apply  to  all  sorts  of 
physical  phenomena.  There  is  a  line  of  con- 
tinuity about  these  things,  from  elementary  to 
most  advanced,  which  is  more  real  than  ap- 
parent. 

Of  course  the  experimenter  must  rely  for 
evidence  only  on  the  messages  he  receives 
through  the  tilting  table.  If  he  goes  about  the 
matter  in  the  proper  way  he  may  be  surprised 
at  what  will  come  to  him  through  this  simple 
means.  I  say  nothing  of  that  here.  It  is  my 
function  to  show  the  thing  is  done — to  explain 
the  mechanism  as  far  as  possible — and  to  let 
him  cogitate  over  and  analyse  the  results. 

Let  me  summarise.  If  five  or  six  people  sit 
round  a  small  ordinary  wooden  table  and  place 
their  hands  palm  downwards  lightly  on  its  sur- 
face, the  table  may  sooner  or  later  rock  about 
or  tilt  up  and  down.  This  movement  of  the 
table  may  conceivably  be  accomplished  in  one 
of  three  ways : — 

(1)  The  table  may  be  consciously  moved  by 
muscular  pressure  from  the  sitters. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     73 

(2)  The  table  may  be  unconsciously  moved 
by  muscular  pressure  from  the  sitters. 

(3)  The  table  may  be  moved  without  the  aid 
of  muscular  action  at  all. 

It  is  only  of  the  last  type  of  movement  I  wish 
to  speak,  for  it  is  a  true  psychic  action  which 
may  not  only  cause  the  table  to  rock  up  and 
down,  but  may  even  make  it  rotate  under  the 
hands  of  the  sitters,  may  cause  it  to  dance  about 
the  floor  of  the  room,  and  even  in  extreme  cases 
levitate — i.  e.,  rise  bodily  off  the  floor.  The 
sitters,  it  is  understood,  are  only  touching  the 
top  of  the  table  lightly  with  the  palms  of  their 
hands  or  with  their  finger  tips.  When  the 
table  thus  moves  about  by  the  true  action  of 
psychic  force  upon  it,  it  seems  to  possess  a 
peculiar  attribute  of  inherent  liveliness  and 
lightness,  very  obvious  to  the  sitters,  who  soon 
become  convinced  that  its  motions  are  quite  in- 
dependent of  muscular  pressure.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  psychic  force  is  absent  or  is  not 
being  applied,  the  table  feels  heavy  and  dead. 

What  causes  the  table  to  move  if  muscular 
force  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter?  Up 
to  the  time  of  my  experiments  on  table  move- 


74        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ments  without  contact,  I  do  not  think  anyone 
had  much  idea.  But  I  fancy  the  matter  is  a  lit- 
tle clearer  now.  Arguing  on  the  basis  of  non- 
contact  phenomena  what  probably  happens  is 
that  psychic  arms — invisible  and  impalpable — 
project  themselves  from  the  person  who  is  me- 
diumistic,  these  arms  being  supplied  with  en- 
ergy from  the  bodies  of  the  sitters.  Briefly, 
the  medium  supplies  the  psychic  arm  and  the 
sitters  the  energy  required  to  work  it.  If  there 
be  no  medium  present  no  psychic  arm  can  be 
projected  and  no  phenomena  can  ensue  though 
all  the  sitters  may  be  able  to  give  forth  psychic 
energy  in  abundance.  Hence  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  because  a  person  is  robust  in  health 
that  he  must  of  necessity  be  a  good  physical 
medium. 

These  invisible  psychic  arms  probably  grip 
the  table  by  adhesion  to  its  under  surface  or 
legs  and  thus  bring  about  the  movements  which 
appear  so  mysterious.  I  must  refer  the  reader 
who  is  interested  in  this  phase  of  the  subject 
to  my  book  "The  Reality  of  Psychic  Phe- 
nomena, '  '  *  where  full  experimental  details  are 

*  Published  1918,  by  E.  P.  Button  &  Company,  New  York. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     75 

given  of  tests  made  with  phenomena  of  the  non- 
contact  type. 

"Why  is  it  so  much  easier  for  the  unseen  en- 
tities to  move  the  table,  i.  e.,  to  apply  psychic 
force  to  it,  when  the  hands  of  the  sitters  are 
in  gentle  contact  with  it  than  when  no  one  is 
touching  it?  Possibly  and  probably  because 
they  find  it  a  great  deal  easier  to  abstract 
psychic  energy  from  the  sitters  and  store  it 
within  the  fibres  of  the  wood  of  the  table  when 
the  sitters'  hands  are  in  contact  with  the  wood 
than  when  there  is  no  contact.  For  I  have  rea- 
son to  believe  that  the  energy  required  to  bring 
about  the  movements — i.  e.,  to  account  for  the 
work  done,  is  really  stored  within  the  wood  of 
the  table  and  used  as  occasion  demands. 

What  are  the  best  conditions  for  obtaining 
good  psychic  movements  of  the  table?  The  first 
essential,  of  course,  is  the  presence  of  a  phys- 
ical medium.  In  many  families,  as  I  have  al- 
ready said,  there  are  one  or  more  members  who 
are  sufficiently  mediumistic  to  allow  of  the  dis- 
play of  ' '  contact ' '  phenomena. 

A  circle  of  sitters  is  necessary  to  support  the 
medium,  i.  e.,  to  give  off  psychic  energy  so  that 


76        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

the  psychic  arms  may  be  enabled  to  move  the 
table  about.  The  number  of  persons  compos- 
ing the  circle  should,  in  general,  be  about  five 
and  should  not  exceed  seven,  at  any  rate  in  the 
home  circle. 

The  sitters  should  sit  on  wooden  chairs — 
never  on  cushions  if  it  can  be  avoided.  They 
'should  make  themselves  quite  comfortable. 
They  should  place  their  hands  lightly  on  the 
surface  of  the  table,  palms  downwards,  the  lit- 
tle finger  of  each  hand  touching  the  little  finger 
of  the  hand  of  the  sitter  on  the  other  side,  but 
their  own  hands  not  in  contact.  The  reason 
for  this  last  is  that  the  psychic  fluid — prob- 
ably a  very  attenuated  form  of  matter  with 
which  is  associated  psychic  energy — is  caused 
to  circulate  through  the  bodies  of  the  sitters, 
gaining  strength  from  each,  and  if  a  person's 
own  hands  are  in  contact  there  is,  to  use  an 
electrical  analogy,  the  likelihood  of  a  short  cir- 
cuit, with  the  consequences  that  his  share  of 
the  energy  cannot  be  taken.  For  a  similar  rea- 
son the  legs  must  not  be  crossed  but  must  be 
planted  firmly  on  the  floor.  After  the  seance 
has  been  in  operation  for  some  time,  say  for 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     77 

half  an  hour,  these  precautions  may  be  sen- 
sibly relaxed  without  injury  to  phenomena,  as 
by  that  time  a  large  store  of  psychic  energy 
has  probably  been  accumulated.  If  a  cold 
breeze  is  felt  playing  about  the  hands  it  may 
be  taken  as  a  certain  sign  that  psychic  ac- 
tion is  under  way.  The  fingers  of  some  of  the 
circle  may  also  become  cold  and  some  may 
experience  a  cobwebby  sensation  about  the  face, 
which  are  also  signs  of  psychic  action.  After 
a  while  the  cold  breeze  usually  ceases  and  the 
fingers  become  warm,  probably  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  withdrawal  of  psychic  energy  has 
ceased  or  is  complete. 

The  disposition  of  the  sitters  round  the  table 
is  important.  Generally  speaking  the  two  sexes 
should  alternate  although  the  rule  is  not  with- 
out exception.  Anyhow  at  a  first  sitting  let  the 
men  and  women  sit  alternately.  If  phenomena 
are  not  obtained  try  various  alterations.  Even 
if  phenomena  are  obtained  take  the  advice  of 
the  operating  entities  as  to  the  permanent  dis- 
position of  the  sitters.  The  reason  why  some 
arrangements  of  the  sitters  are  good  and  some 
bad  has  probably  to  do  with  the  ability  of  the 


78        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

various  members  of  the  circle  to  supply  psychic 
energy.  To  take  a  mechanical  analogy,  the  sit- 
ters may  be  likened  to  a  lot  of  steam  engines 
of  different  types  and  sizes.  Some  are  able 
to  produce  more  work  than  others.  In  arrang- 
ing such  a  series  of  engines  so  that  they  would 
all  work  together  and  give  the  maximum  com- 
bined amount  of  work,  we  should  have  to  be 
careful  we  did  not  set  any  one  of  them  to  work 
against  /another  and  cause  neutralisation  of 
effort;  and  further,  it  would  be  better  to  ar- 
range them  in  a  series  of  gradation  as  regards 
size,  so  that  a  small  one  was  not  working  be- 
side a  large  one  and  so  on.  The  reader  will 
thus  see  the  underlying  idea  in  having  the 
proper  arrangement  of  sitters. 

The  type  of  table  used  in  these  experiments 
is  of  some  importance  if  good  results  are  hoped 
for.  To  begin  with,  it  should  be  made  of  wood, 
and  a  wood  of  not  too  great  density.  Ordinary 
deal  is,  I  think,  the  most  suitable.  The  wood 
must  not  be  painted  or  stained  or  touched  in 
any  way,  the  reason  for  this  being  that  experi- 
mental work  shows  that  the  psychic  arms — 
those  usually  invisible  and  impalpable  struc- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     79 

tures  which  grip  the  table  and  move  it  about 
(at  any  rate  in  non-contact  phenomena)  are 
able  to  act  best  on  the  plain  wood.  The  rougher 
the  surfaces,  within  limits,  the  better.  Polished 
bodies,  whether  of  metal  or  of  wood,  are  dis- 
liked by  these  arms  as  they  cannot  get  a  grip 
on  such  surfaces.  In  fact,  during  experimental 
investigation,  I  have  always  to  place  a  rough 
piece  of  cloth  over  any  surface  which  is  pol- 
ished and  upon  which  I  wish  psychic  force  to 
be  exerted.  An  open  porous  wood  is  also  best 
for  the  reason  that  the  psychic  energy — which, 
as  I  have  already  said,  seems  to  be  associated 
with  matter  in  one  of  its  finest  forms — appears 
to  be  required  to  be  stored  up  in  the  wood,  and 
if  the  latter  is  too  dense  and  hard,  these  par- 
ticles of  matter  cannot  effect  a  satisfactory 
lodgment. 

I  do  not  recommend  that  the  surface  of  the 
table  be  made  round.  I  think  an  ordinary  rec- 
tangular one  is  best  with  its  corners  left  quite 
square.  In  fact,  as  a  general  rule,  it  may  be 
stated  that  there  should  be  nothing  at  all 
rounded  or  curved  about  the  seance  table.  The 
legs  should  be  square.  No  edges  should  be 


bevelled.  The  reason  for  all  this  is  that  ex- 
periment shows  that  the  free  end  of  the  psychic 
arm  grips  by  adhesion,  and  that,  like  the  hu- 
man hand,  it  can  get  the  best  grip  on  a  corner 
or  edged  surface. 

The  weight  of  the  table  should,  generally 
speaking,  not  exceed  ten  or  twelve  pounds.  For 
we  have  to  remember  that  the  heavier  the  table 
the  more  work  is  done  in  moving  it ;  and,  as  the 
bodies  of  the  sitters  in  all  probability  supply 
this  energy,  it  follows  that  the  less  energy  re- 
quired the  less  the  drain  on  the  members  com- 
posing the  circle.  If  possible  the  table  should 
be  constructed  without  nails,  screws,  or  metal 
clamps  of  any  kind ;  but  if  it  is  necessary  to  use 
any  nails  or  screws  they  should  be  well  bedded 
into  the  wood  and  their  heads  covered  with 
putty.  The  dimensions  of  the  table  should  "be 
about  thirty  inches  by  twenty  inches  on  top,  its 
height  about  twenty-seven  inches,  it  should  have 
four  legs  and  cross-bars  joining  the  legs  near 
the  bottom.  It  should  also  have,  if  possible,  a 
flat  piece  of  wood  about  a  foot  above  the  floor 
fitted  in  between  the  legs.  The  table  should 
be  pretty  firmly  and  strongly  made,  as  some- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    81 

times  the  movements  due  to  psychic  action  be- 
come fairly  violent — especially  towards  the  end 
of  the  seance — and  it  is  likely  to  come  in  for 
hard  usage. 

If  the  experimenter  does  not  wish  to  go  to 
the  trouble  of  getting  a  table  as  outlined  above, 
a  little  bamboo  one  weighing  four  or  five 
pounds,  such  as  is  used  for  holding  ornaments, 
will  be  found  quite  useful,  especially  if  there 
are  only  two  or  three  sitters.  But  I  recommend 
all  who  are  in  earnest  about  the  matter  to  have 
a  proper  table  made,  which  should  be  used  for 
no  other  purpose  than  for  seances. 

The  seance  room  should  be  in  a  quiet  part 
of  the  house  and  as  far  removed  as  possible 
from  street  noises  and  the  like.  It  should  not 
be  too  large.  It  should  be  well  ventilated,  and, 
if  the  higher  phenomena  are  desired,  the  venti- 
lation system  must  not  allow  of  external  light 
entering  the  chamber.  The  temperature  of  the 
room  is  also  an  important  factor  if  we  desire 
good  phenomena.  About  65°  Fahrenheit  seems 
to  be  the  best.  Apart  from  inconvenience  to  the 
sitters  caused  by  temperatures  much  higher  or 
lower  than  this,  the  psychic  emanations  from 


82        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

the  bodies  of  the  medium  and  sitters  are  also 
probably  to  some  extent  adversely  affected — it 
being  probably  a  question  of  chemistry.  Ex- 
perimenters have  found  that  a  wet  or  moist 
condition  of  the  atmosphere  is  deleterious  to 
phenomena,  the  dry,  electrical  condition  being 
most  advantageous.  Perhaps  the  presence  of 
an  undue  quantity  of  water  vapour  in  the  air 
causes  reaction  upon  the  psychic  stuff  present 
in  the  chamber,  the  action  again  being  a  chemi- 
cal one. 

The  question  of  lighting  the  seance  room  is 
an  important  one.  Indeed,  I  may  say  that  the 
light  question  has  been  the  most  troublesome 
one  throughout  the  whole  history  of  psychic  re- 
search. The  plain  fact  of  the  matter  is  that 
anything  like  advanced  phenomena  cannot  be 
obtained  in  any  but  the  feeblest  of  light.  Of 
course  there  are  very  good  reasons  for  this 
state  of  things,  but  nevertheless  it  is  very  an- 
noying. Perhaps,  generally  speaking,  the  fact 
that  nothing  of  any  magnitude  can  be  obtained 
in  ordinary  light  is  a  provision  of  nature,  for 
otherwise,  I  suspect  this  world  of  ours  would 
be  continually  under  impact  from  the  realms 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM      83 

psychic.  The  chief  specific  reason  for  the  neces- 
sity of  absence  of  light  seems  to  lie  in  the  fact 
that  ether  light  vibrations  prevent  the  efflux  of 
psychic  energy  from  the  bodies  of  the  sitters,  or 
else  inhibit  the  invisible  emanations  from  the 
body  of  the  medium;  that  is  to  say,  the  ether 
ripples  interact  on  psychic  stuff  generally  and 
break  it  down. 

For  advanced  phenomena  I  have  only  been 
able  to  use  a  red  light,  i.  e.,  the  kind  of  light 
in  which  the  ether  vibrations  are  slowest.  How- 
ever, for  contact  phenomena  such  as  I  have 
been  considering,  we  need  not,  fortunately,  be 
so  rigorous.  If  the  seance  is  held  at  night  it 
is  generally  sufficient  to  pull  down  the  blinds 
and  put  a  screen  in  front  of  the  fire,  the  gas 
or  other  lights  being  lowered.  Have  no  illu- 
mination, or  very  little,  on  the  top  or  under 
surface  of  the  table.  If  the  experimenter  de- 
sires to  have  the  best  results  and  does  not  mind 
going  to  some  trouble,  he  should  instal  a  sys- 
tem of  red  illumination.  If  gas  is  the  illumi- 
nant,  it  is  easy  to  fix  it  inside  a  lantern  hav- 
ing red  glass  front  and  sides.  If  electricity  is 
available,  red  glass  globes  can  be  used,  and 


84        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

if  fine  gradation  is  essential,  a  resistance  may 
be  placed  in  the  circuit  so  that  the  intensity  of 
illumination  may  be  increased  or  decreased  at 
will.  For  the  higher  phenomena,  such  as  move- 
ments without  contact,  a  proper  lighting  sys- 
tem is  essential,  and  this  means  also  a  special 
room  kept  for  nothing  but  seances.  Also  in  this 
case  a  proper  method  of  heating  the  room  is  re- 
quired, no  open  fires  being  possible.  Various 
gas  and  electric  stoves  can  be  obtained  which 
give  out  heat  but  no  light,  and  one  of  these 
should  be  installed,  or  a  little  ingenuity  in  the 
use  of  asbestos  sheet  can  prevent  light  rays 
from  being  projected  into  the  room  if  an  ordi- 
nary heating  stove  is  used  (of  course  an  ordi- 
nary gas  burner  or  electric  light  should  also 
be  in  the  room  so  that  the  chamber  may  be 
normally  lighted  except  during  the  time  of  the 
actual  seance).  But  these  precautions  are  only 
necessary  for  the  major  phenomena  and  are  not 
needed  for  motion  of  a  table  with  contact. 
Many  mediums  can  obtain  with  contact  good 

N 

psychic  movements  of  the  table  in  fairly  strong 
daylight,  and  most  can  obtain  them  in  a  light 
comparable  to  the  dusk  of  evening.  Let  each 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    85 

experimenter  try  for  himself  and  discover  the 
maximum  of  light  possible  consistent  with  good 
results. 

The  inhibiting  properties  of  actinic  light  are 
sometimes)  useful.  For  occasionally  towards 
the  end  of  a  seance  the  table  movements  become 
very  strong — stronger,  in  fact,  than  is  agreeable 
if  the  mediumship  is  a  little  above  the  average 
— and  if  that  is  so  these  motions  may  be  imme- 
diately stopped  by  shining  a  strong  light  on  and 
around  about  the  table  top,  i.e.,  the  gas  need 
only  be  turned  on  full. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  seance  the  members 
composing  the  circle  should  clasp  hands  in  chain 
order  for  about  a  minute,  a  request  being  made 
at  the  same  time  to  the  entities  controlling  the 
circle  that  the  loss  of  psychic  energy  due  to  the 
phenomena  should  be  averaged  up  amongst  the 
sitters.  I  have  found  that  this  method  really 
has  some  value  and  prevents  undue  depletion 
from  anyone  from  whom  the  psychic  flow  can  be 
easily  started. 

I  am  going  now  to  describe  some  experi- 
mental work  which  can  be  done  on  contact  phe- 
nomena. The  apparatus  is  comparatively  sim- 


86        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

pie  and  may  be  constructed  by  anyone  possess- 
ing a  little  ingenuity.  I  am  aware  that  many 
investigators  of  this  subject  would  like  to  test 
the  matter  in  a  more  rigorous  manner  than  is 
possible  in  the  ordinary  way. 

Figure  1  shows  the  type  of  table  I  have 
employed  at  many  of  my  experimental  seances. 
Its  construction  will  be  readily  understood  from 
the  photograph,  although  the  reader  will  note 
that  there  is  no  underleaf  such  as  I  have  rec- 
ommended previously,  the  reason  for  this  being 
that  with  experimental  work  it  is  advisable  to 
have  the  legs  clear  of  all  encumbrances. 

Figure  2  shows  the  underside  of  the  table 
and  the  construction  adopted  in  order  to  use 
as  few  nails  as  possible. 

Figures  3  and  4  show  the  table  fitted  up  for 
experimental  work. 

Briefly  the  object  of  the  apparatus  on  the  top 
of  the  table  is  to  prevent  muscular  pressure, 
or  at  least  to  render  the  fact  of  muscular  pres- 
sure immediately  known. 

Figure  5  is  a  plan  of  the  top  of  the  table.  A 
rectangular  piece  of  wood  (E)  is  screwed  to 
the  centre  of  the  table;  four  thin  flat  pieces 


FIG.  1 


FIG.  2 


FTG.  3 


FIG.  4 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    87 

of  wood  A,  B,  C,  and  D  are  hinged  to  E, 
so  that  they  can  move  freely  up  and  down. 
Underneath  each  of  these  flat  pieces  of  wood  a 
small  piece  of  helical  spring  is  fixed  to  the  sur- 
face of  the  table,  and  each  of  the  flat  pieces  rests 


FIG.  5 


on  the  top  of  the  spring.  Upon  the  surface  of 
the  table  and  upon  the  lower  surfaces  of  A,  B,  C, 
and  D,  metal  contacts  are  fixed,  which  are  con- 
nected together  by  insulated  copper  wire  and 
put  in  the  circuit  of  an  electric  ball  which  is 
fixed  upon  the  wall.  Across  the  centre  of  A, 
B,  C,  and  D  a  chalk  line  is  drawn.  The  pres- 
sure necessary  upon  A,  B,  C,  or  D  to  cause 


88        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

the  contacts  to  meet  and  the  bell  to  ring  can  be 
ascertained  by  placing  weights  upon  them.  The 
sitters  must  be  instructed  not  to  place  their  fin- 
gers beyond  the  chalk  lines.  A  good  way  to 
adjust  the  apparatus  is  to  place  a  small  weight 
anywhere  on  A,  B,  C,  or  D,  outside  the  chalk 
line,  and  thus  cause  the  bell  to  ring.  A  very 
little  manipulation  will  soon  enable  the  experi- 
menter to  so  arrange  matters  that  the  bell  will 
ring  for  any  pressure  exceeding,  say,  half  a 
pound. 

The  table  is  suspended  by  four  cords  as 
shown  in  figures  3  and  4  and  is  hung  from  a 
circular  spring  balance  which  is  fixed  to  the 
roof.  The  legs  should  clear  the  floor  by  a  dis- 
tance of  3  inches  or  4  inches.  The  four  sitters 
forming  the  circle  should  then  sit  upon  wooden 
chairs  and  place  their  fingers  lightly  beyond  the 
chalk  lines  upon  A,  B,  C,  and  D,  respectively. 
The  experimenter  should  satisfy  himself  that 
the  bell  will  ring  for  any  combined  pressure 
greater  than,  say,  a  couple  of  pounds.  The  se- 
ance should  then  be  allowed  to  proceed  in  the 
usual  way.  If  the  mediumship  be  fairly  strong 
it  will  be  found  that  the  table  will  soon  begin 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    89 

to  oscillate  about  and  jump  and  down.  A  re- 
quest should  then  be  made  to  the  operators  that 
a  downward  force  be  put  upon  the  table  without 
causing  the  bell  to  ring.  This  may  not  be  very 
successful  at  first,  but  sooner  or  later  it  will 
be  found  that  the  spring  balance  will  indicate 
a  considerable  downward  pull — much  in  excess 
of  that  possible  by  muscular  pressure  from  the 
sitters  without  causing  the  bell  to  ring.  Also 
a  request  may  be  made  that  the  table  be  pulled 
or  pushed  upwards  without  the  bell  ringing, 
and  this  will  probably  be  also  found  possi- 
ble. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  results  that  I 
have  obtained  with  apparatus  such  as  described. 
With  the  hands  of  the  sitters  lightly  touch- 
ing the  top  of  the  contact  apparatus  I  have 
had  the  table  pulled  downwards  with  the  force 
of  27l/2  Ibs.  in  excess  of  the  weight  of  the  table, 
and  I  have  had  it  pushed  or  pulled  upwards 
with  a  force  of  12  or  14  Ibs.,  that  is  to  say,  with 
a  force  practically  equal  to  its  weight.  Not 
once,  but  dozens  of  times  have  I  had  such  results 
as  these,  which  show  beyond  the  possibility  of 
doubt  that  the  pressure  applied  to  the  table  was 


90        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

not  a  muscular  one  but  was  due  to  pure  psychic 
action.  The  reader,  if  he  goes  along  such  lines, 
will  probably  be  able  to  satisfy  himself  in  the 
same  way.  If  he  wish  to  proceed  further  he 
may  place  a  small  platform  weighing  machine 
on  the  floor  beside  the  table,  and  he  may  seat 
the  medium  on  a  chair  placed  upon  the  platform, 
and  in  this  way  he  will  be  able  to  note  the  ef- 
fect on  the  medium's  weight  of  the  various 
psychic  pressures  exerted  on  the  table.  I  have 
a  large  series  of  such  results,  but  I  will  not  give 
them  here.  I  would  rather  the  reader  experi- 
ment for  himself  and  come  to  his  own  conclu- 
sions. It  will  be  found  that  if  the  mediumship 
present  is  at  all  strong  the  contact  phenomena 
may  quickly  develop  into  the  non-contact  va- 
riety, in  which  case  the  reader  will  understand 
that  he  may  proceed  to  experiment  along  simi- 
lar lines.  He  will  probably  find  that  the  meth- 
ods made  use  of  by  the  operators  are  similar 
in  both  cases  though  differing  somewhat  in  de- 
gree. 

Let  me  now  proceed  to  state  some  of  the  con- 
ditions and  precautions  that  must  be  observed 
if  good  non-contact  phenomena  are  expected. 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     91 

In  the  first  place  it  is  useless  to  expect  much  in 
the  way  of  this  kind  of  phenomena  unless  the 
experimenter  is  prepared  to  go  to  considerable 
trouble.  The  lighting  will  have  to  be  attended 
to  carefully,  for  probably  nothing  will  be  ob- 
tained if  any  daylight  enters  the  seance  cham- 
ber. An  artificial  light  will  have  to  be  resorted 
to,  and  the  only  kind  of  light  possible,  as  I  have 
already  explained,  is  a  red  one.  The  sitters 
will  have  to  attend  regularly,  once  a  week  prob- 
ably for  months  on  end.  They  should  keep  to 
a  definite  hour  for  each  sitting,  and  nothing,  ex- 
cept the  impossible,  should  prevent  the  seance 
being  duly  held  at  that  particular  hour.  The 
table  should  be  placed  within  the  centre  of  the 
circle,  but  the  sitters,  instead  of  placing  their 
hands  upon  its  surface,  should  clasp  each  other's 
hands  in  chain  order.  Figure  1  shows  a  cor- 
rect method  of  holding  the  medium's  hands, 
where  it  will  be  seen  that  the  fingers  are  com- 
paratively free — the  reason  for  this  being  that 
experiments  show  that  the  psychic  fluid  issues 
most  easily  from  the  extremities,  either  hands 
or  feet.  It  i,s  not  necessary  that  the  medium 
should  go  into  trance  for  non-contact  phenom- 


92        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

ena ;  indeed  she  may  be  as  wide  awake  as  any 
of  the  members  of  the  circle,  even  while  phe- 
nomena of  tremendous  magnitude  are  occur- 
ring. At  the  same  time  if  the  medium  evinces 
any  desire  to  go  into  trance  nothing  should  be 
done  to  prevent  her,  for  she  will  be  quite  safe 
if  the  circle  is  being  conducted  on  satisfactory 
lines.  It  is  possible  that  for  several  months  no 
phenomena  at  all  will  be  obtained,  while  on 
the  other  hand  phenomena  may  occur  within 
five  minutes  of  the  red  light  being  turned  on. 
The  kinds  of  phenomena  to  be  expected  are 
raps,  movements,  and  levitation  of  the  table. 
If  raps  occur  it  will  be  very  soon  found  that 
there  is  some  conscious  intelligence  behind 
them.  A  code  should  then  be  arranged  with 
this  intelligence,  say  three  raps  for  "yes,"  one 
for  "no"  and  two  for  "doubtful."  Messages 
may  also  be  arranged  for,  by  a  rap  being  given 
for  any  particular  letter  of  the  alphabet  as  it 
is  spelt  out.  Above  all  I  would  impress  upon 
the  reader  the  fact  that  non-contact  phenomena 
are  of  a  somewhat  advanced  type,  and  that  if  he 
expects  to  get  them  he  will  have  probably  to  go 
to  considerable  trouble,  and  perhaps  inconve- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     93 

nienoe;  nevertheless,  I  am  sure  that  this  type 
of  phenomena  is  not  at  all  beyond  the  medium- 
ship  of  a  great  many  persons,  and  I  expect  to 
see  it  develop  greatly  in  the  future. 


It  has  been  found  from  experience  that  the 
effect  of  music  at  seances  is  to  heighten  and 
make  easier  the  phenomenal  effects  obtained. 
Good  harmonious  singing  has  certainly  a  ben- 
eficial effect.  Organ  music  greatly  assists 
things  at  materialisation  sittings,  and  during 
seances  for  all  kinds  of  phenomena  a  little  sing- 
ing should  be  indulged  in.  How  does  music 
help?  In  my  opinion  in  two  ways.  The  first 
and  most  obvious  is  that  it  soothes  the  minds 
of  those  present,  and  experience  proves  that  for 
the  best  results  an  equable  condition  of  mind  is 
essential.  Any  anxiety,  worry,  or  mental  dis- 
turbance brought  into  the  seance  room  is  very 
deleterious  to  the  production  of  good  phenom- 
ena. A  light-hearted,  hopeful,  buoyant  spirit 
is  by  far  the  best.  The  operating  entities  find 
a  heavy,  melancholy  condition  of  mind  almost 
impossible  to  work  with,  for  the  reader  should 


94        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

remember  there  is  much  reason  to  suppose  that 
even  for  physical  phenomena  the  brains  of  the 
sitters  are  impressed;  I  mean  that  the  flow  of 
nervous  energy  is  probably  started,  or  at  any 
rate  partly  started,  by  impression  on  portions 
of  the  brain.  Hence  the  beneficial  effect  of  good 
music  upon  the  spirits  of  the  sitters  is  a  direct 
aid  to  the  production  of  phenomena.  But 
music,  for  physical  phenomena,  at  least,  has  a 
second  and  perhaps  more  important  function. 
This  seems  to  be  nothing  less  than  to  set  the 
air  into  a  state  of  rhythmic  stress.  It  is  well 
known  that  sound  is  transmitted  by  waves  in 
the  air,  alternate  rarefactions  and  compres- 
sions. It  would  appear  that  when  the  flabiness, 
as  it  were,  has  been  taken  out  of  the  air  by  set- 
ting it  into  an  initial  state  of  slight  vibratory 
stress  by  the  action  of  sound  waves,  the  spirit 
operators  can  work  to  the  best  advantage.  The 
same  kind  of  thing  is  not  unknown  in  ordinary 
experimental  work.  As  a  case  in  point  I  may 
cite  an  experiment  often  performed  in  mechan- 
ics laboratories,  where  a  long  cord  of  india-rub- 
ber has  weights  applied  to  its  end  in  order  that 
the  elongation  produced  may  be  measured.  To 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    95 

take  the  initial  looseness  out  of  the  cord,  a  very 
small  weight  is  first  hung  on  it  and  this  weight 
is  not  counted  in  subsequent  computations. 
That  is  to  say,  to  get  the  best  effects  and  to 
render  the  calculations  accurate,  the  cord  is 
first  put  into  a  slight  state  of  stress.  So  it  is, 
I  opine,  with  the  air  in  the  seance  room.  The 
operators  find  it  easier  to  throw  out  their  psy- 
chic projections  if  the  air  is  in  a  state  of  slight 
initial  vibratory  stress,  and  they  find  this  is 
best  brought  about  by  music  and  especially  by 
the  deep  notes  of  the  organ.  There  is  a  reason, 
if  we  can  only  find  it,  for  everything,  and  it  is 
wise  to  seek  the  why  and  wherefore  of  things 
in  the  deep  and  mysterious  processes  connected 
with  psychic  phenomena. 

Nearly  all  physical  seances,  from  the  most 
elementary  to  the  most  advanced,  can  be  di- 
vided into  two  fairly  well-marked  stages.  There 
is  the  stage  of  preparation  or  of  psychic  in- 
stability, and  the  stage  of  psychic  equilibrium. 
In  the  former  the  various  initiatory  processes 
are  set  in  operation  which  presently  result  in 
phenomena.  The  preparatory  part  of  the  se- 
ance time  is  required,  I  think,  chiefly  to  set 


96        HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

processes  going  which  result  in  a  supply  of 
psychic  energy  being  obtained  from  the  bodies 
of  the  sitters.  The  nervous  twitching  of  the 
body  often  experienced  at  or  near  the  com- 
mencement of  seances  is  visible  evidence  of  this 
fact.  The  duration  of  the  initial  stage  is  af- 
fected by  many  things,  the  health  and  harmony 
of  the  sitters,  and  the  state  of  the  weather  be- 
ing perhaps  the  most  important.  If  all  or  most 
of  the  essential  conditions  are  good,  the  prepar- 
atory stage  is  usually  over  very  quickly.  I  have 
seen  phenomena  commence  the  moment  the  red 
light  was  turned  on,  and  on  the  other  hand,  with 
the  same  sitters  and  conditions  apparently  the 
same,  I  have  seen  them  delayed  for  half  an 
hour;  thus  the  importance  of  going  to  consid- 
erable trouble  with  details. 

I  have  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  operators 
— i.e.,  the  entities  producing  the  phenomena, 
whether  the  reader  look  upon  such  entities  as 
spirits,  our  subconscious  selves,  or  extra-ter- 
restrial intelligences — have  to  do  a  good  deal  of 
experimenting  in  order  to  obtain  satisfactory 
results.  I  have  many  times  watched  them  ex- 
perimenting in  order  to  bring  about  some  par- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIEITUALISM     97 

ticular  phenomenon  they  desired;  they  would 
keep  trying  even  after  repeated  failures,  and 
would  not  give  in  until  success  was  actually  at- 
tained or  until  they  realised  that  what  they 
wished  was  impossible  of  accomplishment.  I 
do  not  doubt  that  even  the  simplest  phenomena 
require  quite  a  lot  of  testing  and  working  up 
before  a  successful  result  is  reached — for  it 
must  be  remembered  that  these  entities  are  not 
working  miraculously  but  are  making  use  of 
natural  laws  that  we  of  this  world  know  little 
about  at  present.  A  time  is  coming,  of  course, 
when  we  shall  know  quite  a  lot  about  them,  but 
that  time  is  not  yet. 

Above  all,  whether  the  experimenter  accepts 
the  spirit  hypothesis  or  not  he  should  remember 
at  the  very  least  that  he  is  impinging  upon  the 
realm  of  unknown  energies  and  intelligences 
and  should  therefore  only  touch  the  matter  if 
he  is  prepared  to  give  it  proper  attention.  If 
he  could  have  a  peep  behind  the  scenes  while 
even  such  an  elementary  form  of  phenomena  as 
table  movements  is  taking  place,  he  would  prob- 
ably be  greatly  surprised  at  what  he  would  see. 
My  deliberate  opinion,  after  some  years  of  re- 


98        HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

search  in  this  field,  is  that  it  requires  the  co- 
operation and  work  of  many  unseen  entities  to 
produce  physical  phenomena.  All  the  real 
work  is  done  on  their  side  of  the  line  and  all  we 
do  when  we  sit  in  the  seance  room  is  to  supply 
suitable  conditions.  That  is  to  say,  the  sitters 
are  only  the  instruments  through  whom  the 
work  is  done. 


The  reality  of  psychic  phenomena  is  nowa- 
days little  disputed.  In  a  short  time  such  phe- 
nomena will  be  classified  and  indexed  and  form 
part  of  the  acknowledged  scientific  facts  of  the 
day.  It  would  have  been  so  long  ere  this  but 
for  the  intolerable  amount  of  humbug  and  de- 
liberate fraud  formerly  connected  with  the  sub- 
ject. One  cannot  even  yet  be  too  careful  in 
treading  its  thorny  paths.  The  professional 
medium  who  takes  large  fees  must  always  be 
under  the  temptation  to  fraud  if  for  any  cause 
phenomena  should  temporarily  be  lacking  in 
quantity  or  quality.  Some  there  are  who,  to 
their  honour  be  it  said,  do  not  fall;  others  are 
suspect.  It  may  be  said,  speaking  generally, 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM     99 

that  the  psychic  who  can  show  something  in  the 
way  of  physical  phenomena,  such  as  telekinesis, 
direct  voice,  materialisation,  etc.,  is  most  worth 
while.  My  advice  to  the  enquirer  into  things 
psychic  is  to  take  nothing  for  granted  and  to 
leave  ttie  paid  mediums  alone  as  far  as  possible. 
Depend  more  on  the  family  circle  or  on  circles 
made  up  of  intimate  friends.  Go  only  to  me- 
diums who  have  a  very  clean  record  if  you  go 
at  all.  Ask  help  from  people  who  from  long 
experience  in  this  work  can  really  give  you  good 
advice.  For  the  pitfalls  are  many  and  if  not 
careful  you  may  one  fine  morning  find  your 
faith  in  the  realities  of  a  next  world  shattered 
by  the  discovery  that  some  imposition  has  been 
practised  upon  you.  I  do  not  wish  unduly  to 
alarm  any  reader  who  may  know  little  of  the 
subject.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  fraud  hypothesis  has  been 
rather  overdone  in  the  past  and  that  there  is 
really  much  less  imposture  than  is  supposed. 
Nevertheless  it  is  well  to  be  on  the  safe  side 
and  to  recognise  that  it  exists. 

I  suppose  few  people  have  had  the  opportu- 
nity or  the  inclination  to  make  such  a  prolonged 


100       HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

and  almost  microscopical  investigation  into 
some  of  the  advanced  phrases  of  spiritualistic 
phenomena  as  I  have  carried  out;  carried  out 
with  the  help  only  of  personal  friends  and  un- 
der the  most  harmonious  and  perfect  condi- 
tions; where  the  object  of  all  was  only  to  dis- 
cover the  truth,  whatever  that  truth  might  be. 
Few  have  had  the  chance  of  examining  the  evi- 
dence for  so  long  or  so  thoroughly;  of  weigh- 
ing up  the  various  inferences  and  little  things 
which  occur  at  the  seances  in  a  manner  that  at 
last  brings  absolute  conviction  to  the  mind. 
For  while  it  is  true  that  the  major  phenomena, 
such  as  prolonged  levitation  under  experimental 
conditions,  can  be  reported  to  the  world  satis- 
factorily; while  it  is  true  that  the  reaction  fig- 
ures can  be  given,  the  effect  on  the  weight  of  the 
medium  due  to  the  occurrence  of  the  phenom- 
ena, and  so  on,  there  are  a  hundred  and  one 
things  occurring  at  the  sittings  which  cannot  be 
reduced  to  figures,  which  cannot  be  satisfac- 
torily reported  to  the  outside  world,  but  which 
are  nevertheless  full  of  evidential  value  to  the 
persons  present.  As  I  say,  I  have  probed  into 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM  101 

this  matter  very  minutely  and  I  am  now  satis- 
fied that  man  survives  death. 

If  we  glance  over  the  range  of  psychic  phe- 
nomena— a  tremendous  range — we  are  irresis- 
tibly led  to  the  conclusions  that  either  (1)  man 
survives  death  and  the  phenomena  and  happen- 
ings of  the  seance  room  are  due  to  disembodied 
spirits,  or  (2)  they  are  due  to  some  unknown 
part  of  ourselves,  some  latent  intelligent  en- 
ergy connected  with  ourselves  which  not  only 
produces  the  phenomena,  but  acts  intelligently 
and  with  consistent  fraudulence,  inasmuch  as  it 
pretends  to  be  an  independent  spirit  which  has 
passed  through  physical  death  and  now  wishes 
to  communicate  to  show  us  here  on  earth  that 
death  is  really  not  the  end.  In  short,  the  only 
alternative  to  the  spirit  hypothesis  lies  in  the 
possibility  of  there  being  a  chance  that  some- 
thing may  be  discovered  which  will  eventually 
point  to  some  other  origin  of  the  phenomena. 
That  is  the  alternative  I  had  in  mind  all  through 
my  investigations.  As  month  succeeded  month, 
as  each  new  phase  of  phenomena  was  presented, 
as  each  new  experiment  was  done,  I  always  said 
to  myself,  "Can  this  very  determined  work  of 


102      HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

seemingly  intelligent  beings  be  but  a  simula- 
tion after  all?  Can  it  be  all  a  fraud?  Is  it 
possible  that  nature  holds  intelligences  belong- 
ing to  ourselves  or  otherwise,  which  could  so 
persistently  deceive?  What  would  be  the  ob- 
ject of  it  all?  Why  should  our  subliminal  con- 
sciousness (supposing  we  possess  such  a  thing) 
carry  out  for  us  phenomenal  demonstrations  on 
the  lines  of  reason  and  intelligence,  requiring 
effort  and  system,  for  the  object  of  deceiving 
us?"  No!  It  seems  most  unlikely  and  repel- 
lant  to  our  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things.  No- 
body who  has  not  delved  deeply  into  psychic 
phenomena  can  have  any  conception  of  its  tre- 
mendous variety  and  range.  It  includes  teleki- 
netic  phenomena  (movement  of  matter  without 
contact),  apports,  materialisation,  the  direct 
voice,  clairvoyance,  clairaudience,  trance,  etc., 
etc.  There  are,  in  fact,  dozens  of  phases  of 
psychic  action,  all  consistent  in  the  inference 
to  which  they  lead,  namely,  that  man  survives 
death,  and  inconsistent  on  any  other  hypothe- 
sis. I  say  that  the  evidence  is  even  now  great, 
and  I  venture  to  predict  that  within  a  century 
all  doubts  will  have  vanished. 


It  is  a  strange  fact  that  the  most  vociferous 
critics  of  psychic  phenomena  and  of  psychical 
things  generally  are  those  who  have  had  the 
very  slightest  personal  acquaintances  with 
them;  but  this  is  no  uncommon  phenomenon. 
It  has  always  been  so ;  not  perhaps  in  the  scien- 
tific world  so  much  as  in  the  world  of  common 
every  day  affairs;  yet  the  scientific  world  has 
not  been  altogether  exempt,  as  we  see  to-day 
in  the  attempts  of  those,  who  from  prejudice 
or  other  cause,  are  anxious  to  put  a  period  to 
the  researches  of  people  wishing  to  advance  into 
an  unexplored  domain.  These  critics  say  a 
thing  is  not,  and  therefore  because  they  say  so, 
it  is  not.  If  that  does  not  suffice,  they  say  it  is 
impossible,  and  because  they  are  self-appointed 
judges  of  what  is  possible  or  impossible,  it  is 
accordingly  impossible.  Lately,  however,  peo- 
ple have  begun  thinking  for  themselves,  and  ac- 
cordingly the  critics  altered  their  line  of  attack. 
The  psychic  researchers  are  now  easily  satis- 
fied fools.  It  is  quite  true  that  there  may  be 
such  things  as  psychic  phenomena,  but  to  sup- 
pose that  because  a  table  rises  and  remains  sus- 
pended in  the  air  for  five  minutes  or  more  with- 


104      HINTS  AND  OBSEEVATIONS 

out  anyone  touching  it,  or  because  a  voice  is- 
sues forth  from  space  and  says  it  belongs  to 
Mr.  So-and-So  who  is  not  dead  but  on  the  con- 
trary very  much  alive,  to  suppose  from  such 
phenomena  that  the  only  explanation  is  a  spir- 
itualistic one,  is  the  height  of  absurdity.  Our 
critics  say  that  we  have  child-like,  innocent 
minds,  and  that  when  we  witness  phenomena 
we  immediately  rush  to  the  easy  conclusion  that 
they  are  produced  by  the  spirits  of  the  dead. 
"We  gulp  down  these  conclusions  as  a  hungry 
cat  laps  milk,  and  are  as  happy  and  contented 
afterwards.  The  truth  is,  of  course,  that  those 
of  us  who  have  investigated  the  subject  and 
have  accordingly  little  time  to  talk  about  it, 
have  done  nothing  of  the  kind.  Speaking  for 
myself,  and  I  know  it  is  true  of  my  brother 
scientists  who  have  entered  this  field,  I  have 
been  more  careful  not  to  come  to  premature 
conclusions,  I  have  brought  more  critical  fac- 
ulty to  bear  on  the  phenomena,  than  I  have  ever 
done  in  ordinary  scientific  work.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  before  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
phenomena  I  have  experimentally  examined 
were,  in  fact,  produced  by  people  who  once  ex- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    105 

isted  on  this  earth,  and  who  now  exist  in  an- 
other world,  I  have  examined  every  possible 
hypothesis  so  completely,  I  have  analysed  the 
results  of  the  experiments  so  minutely,  I  have 
dug  into  the  heart  of  the  matter  so  thoroughly, 
that  my  critical  faculty,  and  like  most  scientific 
men  I  possess  a  strong  one,  is  quite  satisfied 
as  to  the  conclusion  I  have  adopted.  For  me, 
since  I  know,  it  is  quite  immaterial  if  a  shoal  of 
badly-informed  critics  rail  at  the  results  I  have 
arrived  at  after  years  of  closest  experimental 
study  in  the  seance  room,  but  it  is  sometimes 
hard  on  people  who  have  not  had  my  oppor- 
tunities of  research. 

No  man  can  say  off-hand  whether  an  unseen 
world  exists  or  not.  That  such  a  world  does 
not  affect  our  senses  is  no  argument  for  its  non- 
existence.  That  an  expert  in  insanity  has  seen 
no  sign  o'  it,  is  likewise  no  disproof,  but  rather 
a  verification,  for  the  next  state  is  an  eminently 
sane  one.  That  certain  charlatans  have  some- 
times employed  fraud  in  the  production  of  spu- 
rious phenomena  does  not  affect  the  matter;  that 
Mr.  So-and-So  who  has  done  no  investigation 
says  the  phenomena  will  one  day  be  capable  of  a 


106      HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

' l  natural ' '  explanation,  is  immaterial.  Those  of 
us  who  have  put  time  and  energy  into  the  scien- 
tific investigation  of  this  thing  have  come  prac- 
tically to  the  unanimous  conclusion  that  there  is 
no  explanation  having  any  chance  of  being  true, 
which  does  not  presuppose  the  actual  existence 
of  a  world  outside  the  physical,  peopled,  at  any 
rate  in  part,  by  beings  who  once  lived  upon  this 
earth. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  gullibility  and  simplic- 
ity of  the  critics  of  psychic  phenomena  are  ex- 
traordinary. To  take  one  example;  they  try 
to  explain  away  the  simple  homely  rap — that 
comparatively  common  and  a  simple  method  of 
signalling  between  the  two  worlds.  But  their 
explanations  are  laughable.  The  critics  of  the 
"rap,"  one  of  the  most  elementary  of  all  psy- 
chic phenomena,  say  that  it  is  produced  this 
way  and  that  way  in  the  simplest  manner  con- 
ceivable by  nasty  fraudulent  methods  on  the 
part  of  the  medium.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  have 
studied  the  rap  rather  exhaustively,  placing  the 
medium  on  a  weighing  machine,  obtaining  im- 
pressions of  the  rapping  rod,  and  carrying  out 
various  experiments  of  a  mechanical  and  elec- 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    107 

trical  kind,  so  that  I  know  pretty  well  how  the 
rap  is  produced,  not  from  hearsay  or  imagina- 
tion, but  from  years  of  practical  testing  in  the 
seance  room.  As  I  have  said,  the  ideas  of  the 
critics  concerning  this  same  rap  are  amusing, 
and  of  as  much  importance  as  a  child's  concep- 
tion of  the  universe. 

As  the  most  voluble  of  the  critics  fails  com- 
pletely to  understand  the  mechanism  of  the  rap, 
a  comparatively  trivial  phenomenon,  his  at- 
tempts to  explain  the  higher  phenomena,  such 
as  materialisation  or  the  direct  voice,  are  ac- 
cordingly more  laughable  still.  Probably  no 
phenomena  in  nature  have  received  such  bizarre 
criticism  as  the  psychic.  Some  people,  it  would 
seem,  would  dictate  to  nature  as  to  what  phe- 
nomena should  be  allowed  and  what  not.  They 
call  those  of  us  who  investigate  these  things 
emotional  and  gullible,  whereas,  of  course,  the 
shoe  is  on  the  other  foot,  and  it  is  they  who  are 
the  lamentably  emotional  and  gullible,  inas- 
much as  they  allow  prejudice  full  play  and  at 
the  same  time  place  an  inhibition  to  investigate 
upon  the  intellect. 

In  my  opinion  the  greatest  need  to-day  is  the 


108      HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

discovery  of  a  means  of  doing  without  the  hu- 
man medium  in  our  intercourse  with  the  next 
state,  that  is  to  say,  the  invention  of  a  purely 
instrumental  medium.  The  position,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  is  that  the  vast  majority  of  people 
believe  in  the  reality  of  psychic  phenomena,  but 
are  doubtful  as  to  the  interpretation.  They 
think  that  the  entities  behind  the  phenomena 
may  prove  on  fuller  investigation  to  be  subcon- 
scious intelligences  belonging  to  ourselves. 
They  argue  that  the  human  ego  is  probably  so 
complex  in  its  make  up,  the  human  brain  has 
been  relatively  so  little  explored,  and  the  new 
facts  of  secondary  and  tertiary  personality  are 
so  astounding,  that  there  can  be  no  certainty 
that  even  physical  phenomena,  such  as  material- 
isation, or  that  which  I  have  described  in  my 
book,  are  produced  by  the  spirits  of  the  dead. 
They  argue  that  there  may  be  layers  of  con- 
sciousness behind  our  objective  egos,  which  pro- 
duce the  phenomenal  effects  in  a  way  as  yet  un- 
known, but  nevertheless  discoverable  and  have 
nothing  at  all  to  do  with  human  beings  in  an- 
other world.  The  argument  is  of  course  falla- 
cious, but  it  needs  great  experience  of  psychic 


PHENOMENA  OF  SPIRITUALISM    109 

things  to  see  just  why  it  is  fallacious  and  this 
experience  can  come  to  very  few.  If  then  we 
can  procure  an  instrumental  means  of  communi- 
cation with  the  next  plane  of  being,  one  of  the 
greatest  stumbling  blocks  to  a  general  accept- 
ance of  the  reality  of  the  next  life  will  imme- 
diately vanish.  Can  it  be  done? 

I  am  inclined  to  think  the  chances  are  fairly 
even.  I  base  my  opinion  on  the  certain  fact 
that  a  line  of  continuity  exists  between  the  be- 
ings inhabiting  the  next  state  and  this,  and  that 
those  beings  can  act  on  matter  in  our  world 
in  peculiar  and  as  yet  little  understood  ways. 
These  ways  are  discoverable,  as  I  think  I  have 
shown  elsewhere.  I  am  also  fairly  certain  that 
there  exists  a  form  of  energy  common  to  the 
two  worlds.  Let  this  once  be  discovered,  and 
provided  it  can  be  obtained  and  used  apart  from 
the  human  frame,  the  problem  is  solved.  I 
think,  therefore,  that  the  greatest  need  of  the 
present  day  is  that  means  should  be  provided 
to  enable  scientists  to  get  on  the  track  of  this 
energy  and  sift  the  matter  to  the  bottom.  No 
amateur  dilettante  work  is  likely  to  be  of  the 
slightest  use.  The  investigators  will  have  to 


110      HINTS  AND  OBSERVATIONS 

be  equipped  properly  in  the  scientific  sense,  and 
must  be  prepared  to  make  the  subject  their  life 
study.  This  will  entail  the  provision  of  a  con- 
siderable amount  of  money  for  the  establish- 
ment of  laboratories  thoroughly  equipped  that 
all  the  apparatus  which  experience  shows  to  be 
necessary.  But  the  field  is  so  promising  and 
a  successful  conclusion  to  the  search  would  have 
such  a  profound  effect  on  the  history  of  the 
world,  that  I  have  often  marvelled  the  neces- 
sary funds  have  not  been  forthcoming  in  abun- 
dance long  ago.  I  can  think  of  no  way  in  which 
wealthy  adherents  to  the  psychic  movement 
could  so  well  employ  their  surplus  riches  as  in 
the  direction  I  have  indicated. 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


JUNO  3  1988 

JUN  0  6  1988 

a  39 

UCSD  Libr. 

A        nr\  ilill  Illll  III 


LIBRA? 


